History of Music in Russia From Antiquity to 1800, Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century

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In its scope and command of primary sources and its generosity of scholarly inquiry,Nikolai Findeizen's monumental work, published in 1928 and 1929 in Soviet Russia, placesthe origins and development of music in Russia within the context of Russia's cultural andsocial history.Volume 2 of Findeizen's landmark study surveys music in court life duringthe reigns of Elizabeth I and Catherine II, music in Russian domestic and public life in thesecond half of the 18th century, and the variety and vitality of Russian music at the end ofthe 18th century.

History of Musicin Russia fromAntiquity to 1800NIKOLAI FINDEIZEN (1868–1928).History ofMusicin Russia fromAntiquity to 1800VOLUME 1From Antiquity to the Beginning of theEighteenth CenturyVOLUME 2The Eighteenth CenturyThis work was brought topublication with the generous support of Joseph Bloch.RUSSIAN MUSIC STUDIESMalcolmHamrick Brown, founding editorHistory of Musicin Russia fromAntiquity to 1800VOLUME2The Eighteenth CenturyNikolai FindeizenTRANSLATION BYSamuel William PringEDITEDAND ANNOTATED BYMiloš Velimirović and Claudia R. JensenWITH THE ASSISTANCEOFMALCOLM HAMRICK BROWN ANDDANIEL C. WAUGHThis book is a publicationofIndiana University Press601 North Morton StreetBloomington, IN 47404-3797USATelephone orders800-842-6796Fax orders812-855-7931Orders by e-mailiuporder@indiana.edu© 2008 by Indiana University PressAll rights reservedNo part ofthis book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic ormechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage andretrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association ofAmerican University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception tothis prohibition.The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofAmerican National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for PrintedLibrary Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.Manufactured in the United States of AmericaLibraryof Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataFindeizen, N. F. (Nikolai Fedorovich), 1868–1928.[Ocherki po istorii muzyki v Rossii. English]History of music in Russia from antiquity to1800 / Nikolai Findeizen ; translation by Samuel William Pring ; edited and annotated byMiloš Velimirović and Claudia R. Jensen with the assistance of Malcolm Hamrick Brownand Daniel C. Waugh.v. cm. — (Russian music studies)Includes bibliographical referencesand index.Contents: Vol. 1. From antiquity to the beginning of the eighteenth century.Introduction. The predecessors of the Slavs ; Pagan Rus’ ; Kievan Rus’ ; Novgorod theGreat ; The activities of the Skomorokhi in Russia ; Music and musical instruments inRussian miniatures, woodcuts, and glossaries ; A survey of old Russian folk instruments ;Music in ancient Moscow (fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) ; Music in the monastery.Chashi (toasts). Bell ringing. Sacred performances (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) ;Music in court life in the seventeenth century ; A brief survey of singers, composers, andmusic theorists of the sixteenth and seventeeth centuries ; Music and theater in the age ofPeter the Great — Vol. 2. The eighteenth century. Music and theater, 1730–1740 ; Music incourt life during the reigns of Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II ; Music in Russia’sdomestic life during the second half of the eighteenth century ; The Russian horn band ;Music in Russian public life during the second half of the eighteenth century ; Musicalcreativity in Russia during the eighteenth century ; Literature about music, publishers andsellers of sheet music, instrument makers and merchants.ML300.F413 2008780.947—dc2220060370571 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09 08Book layout and composition: AlcornPublication DesignThese volumes are dedicated, with our thanks, to Joseph Bloch and to

Elizabeth (from M.V.) and to Brad, Anna, and Becky (from C.R.J.) for their support andpatience throughout.ContentsEditors’ Introduction to Volume 2List of Abbreviations13.Music and Theater, 1730–174014. Music in Court Life during the Reigns of ElizabethPetrovna and Catherine II15. Music in Russia’s Domestic Life during the Second Half of theEighteenth Century16. The Russian Horn Band17. Music in Russian Public Life during theSecond Half of the Eighteenth Century18. Musical Creativity in Russia during theEighteenth Century19. Literature about Music, Publishers and Sellers of Sheet Music,Instrument Makers and MerchantsMusic AppendixTable of WorksGlossaryNotesVolume 2BibliographyIndexEditors’ Introduction to Volume 2One of the great pleasures of thisproject, as we noted in the first volume of this edition, has been the depth of advice andexpertise, generously and willingly shared, from which we have been able to draw. Someof the many people to whom we owe our thanks are included in volume 1 of this project,but there are a few whose names must appear in this second volume as well. Thepatience and much-tried good humor of the others involved in this edition, particularlyJoseph Bloch, Malcolm Brown, Daniel Waugh, and Janet Rabinowitch, can only beimagined, and we are most grateful for their support, encouragement, and, most of all,their patience. The quality of this work was immeasurably enriched by several people whoworked many long hours answering questions about Russian grammar and vocabulary.Elena Dubinets’s heroic work on the translation, for this volume as well as for the firstvolume, merits our unending thanks; we exploited beyond reason her knowledgeableadvice and aid. Dan Newton and Laura Friend both gave many hours to this project, andtheir exacting sense of language is evident on nearly every page of this text; it was a greatpleasure to work with both of them. Galina Averina generously volunteered to help withthe long series of eighteenth-century kant texts in this volume, and her thoughtfulsolutions to these difficult passages made them come alive. Her advice and patience hasbeen invaluable, and we thank her most sincerely. Thanks are also due to JacquelineSmith, Carolyn Willis, and Nina Perlina, all of whom contributed to our understanding ofFindeizen’s terminology and prose. We also wish to thank Deborah L. Pierce, at the MusicLibrary of the University of Washington, and to acknowledge again the continuing supportgiven by the Department of Slavic Languages and the School of Music. Elizabeth Sander,James West, John Gibbs, and Mikhail Shmidt also gave their expertise to this project.Finally, to George-Julius Papadopoulos, who ignored the clock and finished the Table ofWorks not only with great style and accuracy but with immense good humor as well, ourprofound thanks and appreciation; his laborious care gave this volume a reliable, accuratebase from which to proceed.There are many difficult editorial issues to contend with inthis second volume of Findeizen’s work, in addition to the procedures outlined for volume1. In this volume, names of composers and performers have, whenever possible, beenrendered in their original language; thus, in as many instances as possible, we haveconsulted additional sources in order to find reliable spellings and have used thosespellings throughout. We have frequently added first names to some of the musiciansFindeizen lists, and these additions do not appear in square brackets, nor do complete

titles or page numbers which have been supplied, when possible, in the notes. In certaincases we have suggested possible candidates or spellings for some of Findeizen’smusicians, and these suggestions, unverified but plausible, do appear in square brackets.Our primary sources include NG2, IRM 2 and 3, and the three volumes of Mooser’sAnnales [MA]; the article on Robert-Aloys Mooser (1876–1969) in NG2 gives some sense ofthe scope of his accomplishments. We have consulted the online version of NG2 as of thespring of 2006. Another excellent source is the recent MP, a three-volume encyclopediawith a fourth volume that includes comparative tables listing musical events in majorWestern European cities along with contemporaneous performances, publications, andappearances in St. Petersburg (and Moscow). This excellent work, which is still in progress,includes many important references to archival material, and has incorporateddiscussions from Western musicological studies, primarily Mooser and NG (not NG2,which was published just as some of these volumes appeared).Findeizen often gives titlesof operas in Russian even if the operas were actually performed in another language. Wehave attempted here to render titles in the language in which they were performed, andhave entered corrections to Findeizen’s titles as necessary. Translations of Russian-language operas are based whenever possible on the translations given in the excellentseries of articles in NG2, written largely by Richard Taruskin; the transliteration systemused in these volumes, however, is slightly different from that in NG2. (We use a strictLibrary of Congress transliteration in the notes and in the Table of Works, and a slightlymodified transliteration in the body of the text, as explained in the preface to volume 1.)The appended Table of Works provides the most complete listing possible of compositionsFindeizen mentions in this volume (although we do not include individual songs). We havegenerally given translations at the first appearance of a composition and thereafter simplyrendered the work by its Russian title. All these editorial decisions represent an attempt toregularize Findeizen’s important data, making it accessible to Western scholars who mightwant to delve into this enormously fruitful and fascinating period in the history of Russianmusic.The terminology Findeizen uses to describe keyboard instruments requiredadditional important editorial decisions. This terminology was quite varied in eighteenth-century Russia, reflecting the many keyboard instruments available there and the manynationalities of the musicians who played and built them. We have been fortunate to havebeen able to consult Robert Karpiak, of the University of Waterloo, who has mostgenerously contributed to this project. The Russian term klavir in the eighteenth centurydesignated a variety of keyboard instruments; thus we have either left this termunchanged or translated it simply as keyboard. The Russian term chembalo (cembalo)seems to have designated the harpsichord fairly consistently in the eighteenth century,and we translate it either as cembalo or harpsichord. Klavesin also indicated aharpsichord or clavesin, as did klavetsimbal. Klavikord indicated a clavichord specifically,although in nonprofessional circles it may have been used to indicate a keyboardinstrument in general. We translate it here as clavichord. The Russian terms fortepiano orfortep’iano are obvious cognates and are translated as such. In this way the terminology

used throughout this volume replicates as closely as possible the terms Findeizen used, aswell as the terms found in the many contemporary sources cited throughout. For themany eighteenth-century publications mentioned throughout the text, particularly thosewith non-Russian titles, we simply duplicate Findeizen’s orthography and transcriptionsalthough they may not be entirely accurate, as the originals were unavailable.MilošVelimirovićClaudia R. JensenAbbreviationsADITArkhiv Direktsii Imperatorskikh teatrov[Archive of the Directorate of Imperial Theaters]. St. Petersburg: Direktsiia Imperatorskikhteatrov, 1892.AEArkheograficheskii ezhegodnik [Archaeographic annual].1958–.BLDRBiblioteka literatury drevnei Rusi [A library of the literature of ancient Rus’].Edited by D. S. Likhachev et al. 11 vols. to date. St. Petersburg: Nauka,1997–.BSovEBol’shaia sovetskaia entsiklopediia [Great Soviet encyclopedia]. 65 vols.Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia, 1926–47.ChOIDRChteniia v Imperatorskomobshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete [Readings of theImperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities at Moscow University]. 1846–1918.ES-BEEntsiklopedicheskii slovar’ [Encyclopedic dictionary]. 82 vols. plus appendixes. Leipzig: F.A. Brokgauz; St. Petersburg: I. A. Efron, 1890–1904.EUEncyclopedia of Ukraine. 6 vols.Toronto: University of Toronto Press and Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press,1984–2001.GIMGosudarstvennyi istoricheskii muzei [State Historical Museum],Moscow.GSEGreat Soviet Encyclopedia [English translation of BSovE, 3rd ed.]. 31 vols. plusindex. New York: Macmillan, 1973–82. Each volume was translated immediately after thepublication of the Russian original, so the articles appear in the order of the Russianalphabet.IRMIstoriia russkoi muzyki [History of Russian music]. Edited by Iu. V. Keldysh etal. Moscow: Muzyka; references to vols. 1 (1983), 2 (1984), 3 (1985), 4 (1986), and 5(1988).IRMNOIstoriia russkoi muzyki v notnykh obraztsakh [A history of Russian music inmusical examples]. Edited by S. L. Ginzburg. 2nd ed., vol. 1. Moscow: Muzyka, 1968; 1sted., vol. 2. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe muzykal’noe izdatel’stvo, 1949.JAMSJournal of theAmerican Musicological Society.LPCA Collection of Russian Folk Songs by Nikolai Lvov andIvan Prach, by Margarita Mazo. Edited by Malcolm Hamrick Brown. Russian Music Studies13. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1987.MAMooser, R.-Aloys. Annales de la musique etdes musiciens en Russie au XVIIIe siècle. 3 vols. Geneva: Mont-Blanc, [1948–51].MOMooser, R.-Aloys. Opéras, intermezzos, ballets, cantates, oratorios joués en Russiedurant le XVIIIe siècle. Bâle: Bärenreiter, [1964].MEMuzykal’naia entsiklopediia [Musicalencyclopedia]. 6 vols. Moscow: Sovetskaia entsiklopediia–Sovetskii kompozitor, 1973–82.MERSHModern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet History. Edited by Joseph L.Wieczynski. 60 vols. to date. Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International Press,1976–.MGGDie Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. 14 vols. plus appendixes. Kassell,1949–69.Mosk. vedomostiMoskovskie vedomosti [Moscow gazette;newspaper].MPMuzykal’nyi Peterburg: Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ [Musical Petersburg: Anencyclopedic dictionary]. Edited by A. L. Porfir’eva. 7 vols. St. Petersburg: Kompozitor,1996–.MQMusical QuarterlyNG2New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd ed., 29vols. New York: Grove’s Dictionaries, 2001; available as Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy,

at .OLDPObshchestvo liubitelei drevnei pis’mennosti [Society of Friends of OldLiterature].PKNOPamiatniki kul’tury. Novye otkrytiia [Monuments of culture. Newdiscoveries]. Annual publication since 1974, with some missed years. Leningrad/St.Petersburg and Moscow: various publishers.PLDRPamiatniki literatury drevnei Rusi[Monuments of literature of ancient Rus’]. Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura,1987–.PRMIPamiatniki russkogo muzykal’nogo iskusstva [Monuments of Russian musicalart]. 11 vols. 1972–.PSRLPolnoe sobranie russkikhletopisei [Complete collection of Russianchronicles]. 40 vols. to date. 1841 to the present, with various reprints and re-editedvolumes.PVLPovest’ vremennykh let po lavrentévskoi letopisi [The tale of bygone years,according to the Laurentian manuscript]. Edited by D. S. Likhachev. 2nd ed. St. Petersburg:Nauka, 1996.Quellen-LexikonQuellen-Lexikon der Musiker und Musikgelehrten by RobertEitner. 10 vols. Leipzig: Breitkopf and Härtel, 1900–1904.RBSRusskii biograficheskiislovar’ [Russian biographical dictionary]. 25 vols. St. Petersburg, 1896–1918[incomplete].RGADARossiiskii arkhiv drevnikh aktov [Russian Archive of Ancient Acts;formerly TsG ADA], Moscow.RGBRossiiskaia gosudarstvennaia biblioteka [Russian StateLibrary; formerly GBL], Moscow.RGIARossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv[Russian State Historical Archive], St. Petersburg.RIBRusskaia istoricheskaia biblioteka[Russian historical library]. 39 vols. St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad:Arkheograficheskaia komissiia, 1872–1927.RIIIRossiiskii institut istorii iskusstv [RussianInstitute of the History of Arts], St. Petersburg.RMGRusskaia muzykal’naia gazeta [Russianmusical gazette].RNBRossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka [Russian National Library;formerly GPB], St. Petersburg.SKKSlovar’ knizhnikov i knizhnosti drevnei Rusi [A dictionaryof writers and writing in early Rus’]. Leningrad: Nauka, 1987–2004.SKSRSvodnyi katalogslavianorusskikh rukopisnykh knig, khraniashchikhsia v SSSR: XI–XIII vv. [A collated catalogof Slavonic-Russian manuscript books preserved in the USSR: 11th–13th centuries]. Maineditor, S. O. Shmidt. Moscow: Nauka, 1984.SMSovetskaia muzyka [Soviet music]. Moscow,1933–91; continued by Muzykal’naia akademiia [Musical academy], 1992–.Spb.vedomostiSanktpeterburgskie vedomosti [St. Petersburg gazette; newspaper].TODRLTrudyOtdela drevnerusskoi literatury Instituta russkoi literatury [Works of the Division of OldRussian Literature at the Institute for Russian Literature]. Leningrad/St. Petersburg:Akademiia nauk, 1934–.TsMBTsentral’naia muzykal’naia biblioteka [Central Music Library],St. Petersburg (formerly the Music Library of the Imperial Theaters).History of MusicinRussia fromAntiquity to 1800VOLUME 2The Eighteenth Century13. Music and Theater,1730–1740Music at court and in society under Anna Ioannovna. Italian intermedi andopera. The court orchestra. Francesco Araja and other musicians in St. Petersburg. Thecourt singers. The first instrument makers. The musical activities of the Academy ofSciences.Anna Ioannovna’s decade-long reign occupies a special place in the history ofRussian music: musical life as we know it had not yet engaged the broader circles ofsociety, yet it did occupy a prominent place at court. Court concerts were instituted as aregular form of musical entertainment, and European-style operatic performances wereorganized; during the reign of Anna’s successor, Elizabeth, these operatic performances

were to lead to the establishment of a permanent opera house. Music, along with theother arts, played its role in Peter the Great’s Westernizing reforms. Peter did not care formusic, but he accepted it as a means of elevating manners and customs, although heoften assigned it an unenviable role in his frivolous public, masked processions. There wassome artistic value in the vocal kanty, which were aimed at celebrating the achievementsof Peter and his fellow warriors, whereas the realm of instrumental music was limited tofanfares and dance pieces. Under Peter’s successors, particularly at the beginning of AnnaIoannovna’s reign, music was no longer an occasional occurrence, and, along with theother arts, became an indispensable part of court life—an embellishment and a requiredentertainment. Henceforth one may speak of its development throughout the country,although not, of course, in the earlier spirit of the creation of folk songs. The welcomingfanfares and dance music now fade into the background, ceding their place to thetheatrical and concert music which imparted a certain luster to court life and which weretherefore further cultivated in that direction.We must keep in mind that Western musicalliterature, which witnessed the early development of Italian and French opera and thebeginning of instrumental forms, found no expression in Russian music of the lateseventeenth and the first quarter of the eighteenth centuries, despite Peter’s desire toreach European standards if only in the external forms of public life. (The concerted styletransplanted onto Russian soil, which put forth abundant shoots in our vocal churchmusic, is an exception.) With Anna Ioannovna’s accession to the throne, there began aperceptible movement favoring the introduction of more varied musical entertainments atcourt. Following the example set by Western capitals, real operatic performances andcourt concerts were instituted; this, in turn, attracted foreign musicians to Russia andsoon led to an independent, although entirely imitative, musical literature. Gradually,toward the mid-eighteenth century, a “court intelligentsia” began to take shape. Thisintelligentsia raised certain artistic issues which were taken up by the emerging Russianartists, who imitated Western models. Music thus became acclimatized, adapted itself tolocal tastes and requirements, and gradually assimilated native Russian elements.Theearliest, rather meager information about the rise of Italian opera, by the well-knownacademician Jacob Stählin, has to this day been utilized almost exclusively in literaturedealing with the history of music in Russia, yet it has proven to be rather incomplete andsomewhat inaccurate. It has been corrected, however, and considerably supplemented byP. Pekarskii and other scholars, and also by original contemporary materials.1EmpressAnna’s accession to the throne was greeted by Vasilii Trediakovskii (a future academicianbut at that time a student) with a triumphal kant he composed in Hamburg:Da zdravstvuetdnes’ Imperatriks AnnaNa prestole sedshe uvenchanna.Hail Empress AnnaToday crownedseated on her throne.A special cantata in honor of the coronation was also performed inWarsaw. It was composed by Giovanni Ristori, who arrived in Moscow shortly thereafterwith a company of Italian artists.2We do not know who set Trediakovskii’s kant to music,but its formal simplicity suggests that it may have been the author himself.Contemporaries report, moreover, that on another occasion Trediakovskii performed a

congratulatory song in the empress’s presence. His kant was probably sung by the courtsingers in 1730, the year of the coronation, since Trediakovskii returned to Russia in thefall of 1731 and published it; he undoubtedly presented it to the new ruler. The firststanza of Trediakovskii’s kant was printed with music, and the piece was subsequentlyincluded in a manuscript collection of three-part vocal kanty. This was the first musicalwork printed in Russia (1730).2A The music was engraved on copperplate at the Academyof Sciences Press, published as a two-part kant as shown in musical example 13.1, withthe title Song composed in Hamburg for the festive celebration of the Coronation of HerMajesty Empress Anna Ioannovna, autocrator of all the Russias, made there on the 10th(according to the new calendar) of August 1730.Beneath the score was added: “By thestudent Vasilii Trediakovskii.”3 The printed edition of Trediakovskii’s “Coronation Song”circulated quite rapidly, and in a three-part version it was included, for example, in themanuscript collection “Psalmy dushepoleznye” [Edifying psalms] (in the Buslaev collectionof the Public Library’s Manuscript Division [RNB]).4From the first months of Anna’s reign,court entertainments underwent many changes, as did the role of music at court and atpublic festivities. The sovereign singers, who as we know took an active role in Peter’svarious private and official celebrations, were now relegated to the background; except forTrediakovskii’s coronation kant, many eighteenth-century collections include no othervocal works of this type. The new empress was the daughter of Tsar Ivan Alekseevich(Peter’s [half]-brother) and Tsaritsa Praskov’ia Fyodorovna.5 She was the widowedDuchess of Courland, and prior to her accession to the Russian throne she had lived inMitau [now Jelgava, Latvia], where the modest ducal household probably emulatedGerman princely establishments. Now, however, Anna had the resources to create ashining, glittering copy. According to Minikh, she added unusual splendor to her court.5AAnna, within a year of coming to the throne, had established a corps of court singers andan orchestra, eminent virtuosi were being engaged, and brilliant operatic performanceswere being staged.Despite her efforts to impart European magnificence to herestablishment, however, Anna’s court entertainments and amusements were anastonishing mixture of extreme contradictions. On the one hand, we have theorganization of Italian opera and court concerts and the introduction of outstandingWestern artists; on the other, the pranks of debased jesters (so profitable that one of theprofessional court musicians preferred to join their ranks), round dances [khorovody] incourt apartments by guardsmen and their wives, and, finally, the amazing rudeness withwhich Anna treated her German maids. When she felt bored they had to sing to her. “Now,girls, sing!” she would shout, and when she was tired of them, “Enough!” She rewarded theweary girls by boxing their ears or even sending them to the laundry to wash clothes. Allthese contradictions illustrate the inclination toward the old Muscovite “customs of thefathers” combined with an increasing desire to pass for an “enlightened empress.”Surrounding herself with Western luxury, Anna entertained herself with horseback ridingand card playing, yet at the same time she believed in the powers of lamp oil, and in herprivate apartments she wore a kerchief on her head.5BEXAMPLE 13.1. “Da zdravstvuet

dnes’ Imperatriks Anna” [Hail Empress Anna]Da zdravstvuet dnes’ Imperatriks AnnaNaprestole sedshe uvenchanna.Krasneishe solntsa i zvezd siiaiushi nyne.Da zdravstvuet namnoga letaPorfiroiu zlatoiu odetaV Imperatorskom chine.Hail Empress AnnaTodaycrowned seated on her throne.More glorious than the sun or stars now shining.May shelive for many yearsGarbed in gilded porphyryIn the Imperial rank.Between these extremeswere the ordinary court diversions and those of contemporary society: masquerades,balls, and illuminations.6 In addition to these, more artistic pleasures, in which music wasto play a predominant role, were cultivated at Anna’s court. We know from contemporarynewspaper accounts (see n. 6) that music was required for various court functions. Theartists and orchestra that assisted at dinners and festivals on a grand scale, enhancing thevarious holidays and victory celebrations, were placed in special locations. The following isa description of a court festivity presented on 27 January 1736 in a hall, sixty paces longand newly constructed for this purpose, to celebrate the empress’s birthday:At one endfacing Her Imperial Majesty’s throne was a sideboard which displayed vessels of gold andporcelain; on both sides of that sideboard were two smaller sideboards and above thatwas a gallery where the virtuosi, castrati, and women singers stood; during dinner theyentertained Her Imperial Majesty with a program of outstanding concerti and cantatas.When toasts to the health of Her Imperial Majesty and Her Family were offered, there wascontinuous music, with the beating of kettledrums and a salvo from field guns posted onthe Neva. (Spb. vedomosti 1736, no. 9)From other reports we learn that Tafelmusik orspecial cantatas were given in an adjoining room; in the summer sometimes separatebalconies were used, which were constructed in front of the palace.Already at thebeginning of Anna Ioannovna’s reign a court orchestra was established for regular andspecial court concerts and theatrical performances. This orchestra developed gradually. Atfirst it was made up of musicians who had remained in court service after the deaths ofPeter I and Catherine I, as well as musicians who had belonged to the Duke of Holstein’sorchestra. (The duke had been banished to Kiel in 1727 after a quarrel with the then-omnipotent Prince Menshikov.) The talented concertmaster Johann Hübner participated,along with the ensemble’s regular members. In addition to this basic group, the courtorchestra was supplemented by a few musicians who remained in Russia after atemporary visit to Moscow by two foreign troupes in 1731. In that year a troupe of Italianplayers who arrived from Dresden gave a few performances in Moscow, and severalconcerts were also given by a band of German musicians headed by the well-known operacomposer Johann Kayser.6AIn her search for a theatrical company that would impart atouch of European luster to her establishment, Anna Ioannovna conferred with theDresden court. One should not forget that relations with Dresden were sanctified bytradition, as the Lutheran church in Moscow’s Foreign Quarter enjoyed the protection ofthe Saxon king; the first of the Russian theatrical masters, pastor Johann Gregory, was alsoclosely associated with the Dresden court. As a result of the correspondence betweenLefort (our ambassador to Dresden) and Weissbach (the Saxon ambassador to Moscow), atroupe of Italian players and musicians was sent to Moscow.6B The leader of the troupe,

Giovanni Ristori, was already familiar to the Moscow court as the composer of thecoronation cantata for Anna Ioannovna that had been performed in Warsaw. Thecompany included the singers Cosimo Ermini (bass), his wife Margarita Ermini, andLudovica Seyfried; the actor and director Tommaso Ristori; and the musician GasparoJaneschi, who remained in Russia, became a court musician, and died in St. Petersburg in1758.6C “The Italian Court Players of His Majesty the King of Poland” departed fromWarsaw on New Year’s Day 1731 and arrived in Moscow in the second half of February, ascan be seen in a contemporary report from Moscow in the Spb. vedomosti (1731, no. 19),stating that “on Friday (26 February) they performed the first comedy with singing toeveryone’s great pleasure in the specially prepared theater in the great hall of the NewImperial Palace.”6DThere is no complete list of the company’s members or of its repertory,nor is it known how long the group remained in Moscow. Nevertheless, the list ofpersonnel and the report published in the Spb. vedomosti allow us to establish that mostof their works were intermedi (short pieces with spoken dialogue and interpolated vocalnumbers) requiring only two or three vocalists and a small orchestra.6E It was at this sametime that artistic intermedi (as distinct from the former commedia dell’arte), theprogenitor of Italian comic opera, began to flourish in Rome and Naples.7 TheKapellmeister of the company, Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1692–1753), composed not onlyoperas but also intermedi (Eitner lists the following: Despina, Simona e Trespolo, Delbo eDorina, Fidelba ed Artabano, Serpilla e Perpello, and others). It is quite likely that some ofthese were performed in Moscow in 1731. We also know that, at the empress’s request,the composer’s father, actor Tommaso Ristori, created some sort of pantomime, probablywith music by his son Giovanni; it so pleased Anna Ioannovna that she rose from her seat,turned to the audience, and led the applause.8Another company of musicians arrived inMoscow in the fall of 1731, judging from a Moscow report on the celebration of AleksandrNevskii’s feast day: “The recently arrived musicians from Germany played then (on 30August) on various musical instruments with agreeable singing” (Spb. vedomosti 1731, no.72). Apparently Kapellmeister Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739) was in that company; thedistinguished composer and representative of Hamburg opera was mentioned by J.Stählin. [This musician was actually Johann Kayser; see n. 6A above.] His daughter, asinger who married the violinist Verocai in Moscow, was there, along with another singer,Christina Maria Avoglio (or D’Avolio) with her husband [Giuseppe Avoglio] and her sister,who later became the wife of the bassoonist Friedrich; the double bass player Eyselt [orEiselt]; the oboist Döbbert; and the violinist Bindi.8A Neither of the two companies stayedin Moscow for long, but some of the vocalists and instrumentalists remained in service inRussia. Thus, apart from the violinist Janeschi, mentioned above, most of Kayser’scompanions entered into Russian service. Giuseppe Avoglio was soon appointed directorof Italian players. Kayser himself was entrusted with the selection and hiring of musiciansin Italy for the Russian court, but, according to Fétis and Stählin, after receiving paymentfor his expenses Kayser did not return to Russia and no one knew his whereabouts for along time.The mission entrusted to concertmaster Hübner was more successful. According

to Stählin, he was also sent to Italy to recruit singers and musicians. Among those herecruited, in addition to the female singer Avoglio, who had already been in Kayser’scompany, Stählin mentions the violinist Luigi Madonis, his brother, the French horn playerAntonio Madonis, and the violinist Pietro Mira, who later became a court jester.8B Still,this information is not entirely trustworthy. Of the musicians listed here, Mira ismentioned for the first time only in the civil list [shtat] of 1733, and both of the Madonisbrothers in 1736. In any event, a new civil list was approved in December 1731, when thecourt troupe, together with the orchestra, consisted of forty-six persons and its budgetamounted to 13,227 rubles, 50 kopecks. A similar list was sanctioned in 1733 as well.Thecompany included a small number of vocalists (Mme Avoglio and her sister, the castratoGiovanni Dreyer and his brother [Domenico Dreyer, an oboist], and also the double bassplayer Eyselt). The orchestra numbered about forty musicians, headed by concertmasterJohann Hübner. This seems to indicate that Italian intermedi were staged in addition toregular concerts at court. Contemporary newspaper reports tell us about the concerts, aswe have seen above. As for the intermedi, there are a few extant libretti from the 1733–34season. The Italian performances were usually staged weekly, on Sundays, at the courttheater in a wing of the Winter Palace. In the summer they took place in a wooden theatererected in the Summer Garden.Italian intermedi were then quite fashionable in Europedue to the ease with which they could be staged and the small cast of no more than twoor three singers, exactly the number of singers serving in the court’s troupe. Pergolesi’s Laserva padrona is considered a classical example of the intermedio, and it was successfullyproduced in Russia and spawned a series of imitations. The Italian intermedio is more orless the same type of work as the French vaudeville with singing and the small GermanSingspiel, although the intermedio grew out of the folkish commedia dell’arte of themarketplace and contained a large dose of caricature in its characters and actions [see fig.102]. The subject of one of the first intermedi successfully presented in St. Petersburg in1733 recalls Mozart’s one-act opera Der Schauspieldirektor, and this subject wasfrequently reworked by authors of comic operas in Italy. It is a parody of backstagemanners in the theatrical world, in Russian titled Podriadchik opery v ostrovy Kanariiskie[The operatic impresario in the Canary Islands; this is Metastasio’s L’impresario delleCanarie]. The work depicts the caprices and stratagems of an Italian prima donna whom aforeign impresario wants to engage, and the dialog is interrupted by arias in which thesinger displays her vocal abilities. The libretti of the Italian comedies and intermediperformed at Anna Ioannovna’s court have been preserved, but the music, unfortunately,has not survived.9FIG. 102. Italian intermedio in the eighteenth century.Academician V. N.Peretts has published the complete texts of the intermedi vocal numbers in Italian andRussian. Perhaps at some time in the future, it might be possible to use the extant vocalrepertory, both printed and in manuscript, in order to reconstruct the arias and duetsfrom these Italian intermedi. Peretts has also listed plot summaries, which are particularlyinteresting both in general as well as for the present survey, as they can give us an idea ofthe literary merits of the earliest librettists. The following may serve as

examples:Podriatchik opery v ostrovy Kanariiskie [The operatic impresario in the CanaryIslands]An intermedio with music, St. Petersburg, 1733Synopsis of the intermedio:Itseems that Mr. Nibby has come to Italy to engage a company of male and female singersfor a new theater in the Canary Islands. For this purpose he has visited Mme Dorina, afamous musician, to negotiate a contract. The rest is a criticism, that is to say, mockery ofthe theatrical characters, both male and female.Posadskoi dvorianin [The artisangentleman]An intermedio with music, St. Petersburg, 1734Synopsis of theintermedio:Laurinda, a young maid from a good family, wants to marry a rich man sinceshe is poor; she intends to attain this with a wealthy nobleman who instructs her on howto achieve this aim. Over the course of the intermedio we see what happens toher.10Information is also included about Russian court productions in which not only thecadets of the Shliakhetnyi Corps participated but also singers, court pages, dwarfs,Kalmucks, and even members of the court aristocracy. (The Shliakhetnyi [or Shliakhetskii]Cadet Corps was established in 1731, and, in many respects, its role in the history of theRussian theater in St. Petersburg was analogous to that of the Surgical School in Moscow.)One of these performances took place early in 1733, soon after Anna Ioannovna’s move toSt. Petersburg.11 The play staged was the Komediia o Iosife [Play of Joseph] by anunknown author but reminiscent of a similar play performed in Moscow at the end of theseventeenth century. The participation of six singers shows that the work included vocalnumbers. The production of this play suggests that there was a demand for Russianworks; for some time, however, this demand could not be satisfied because of a lack ofmaterial, with the exception of the old mystery plays, which were hardly suitable for thenew court life. Instead of relying on these old mystery plays, Italian opera began to beintroduced at court.Here we should stress that, contrary to most investigators’ opinions,there was no permanent operatic theater during Anna Ioannovna’s reign. The survivinglists of Italian artists show that there was a troupe of Italian dramatic actors (komedianty),including a limited number of vocalists. This troupe, along with the instrumentalists (whowere included in the lists with the others), were mainly employed in presenting the regularcourt concerts and intermedi. Since operatic performances were extremely expensive,they were limited to the staging of no more than one opera per year, although the operaswere repeated. But the temporary character of this artistic enterprise cannot beconsidered a permanent operatic theater. Throughout Anna Ioannovna’s reign, beginningwith her coronation (viewed as the date on which Italian opera was introduced to Russia)and to the end of her rule, only three operas by Araja were staged, one opera per year in1736, 1737, and 1738.The members of the Italian company in 1735–40 included MmeAvoglio (1731–38), the castrato Dreyer (1731) and his brother, also a singer (1731), and theinstrumentalists included the well-known double bass player Eyselt (1731).12 Avoglio andthe Dreyer brothers were members of the first company, recruited in 1731, andapparently a few of them served through 1734–35, when a new troupe of singers wasbrought in: Mlle Masani [probably Caterina Mazany], Caterina and Filippo Giorgi (1739–45),the castrato Pietro Morigi, and the Florentine Pietro Petricci (or Perdicci). At that time the

court troupe included the singer Rosa Ruvinetti-Bon, who, together with most of thetroupe members, was granted a release from service in 1738. She returned to Russiaduring Elizabeth Petrovna’s reign, as her name is found among the operatic performers inthe 1740s. The troupe also included Constanza Piantanida, the wife of musician GiovanniPiantanida. She was known as La Pasterla and appeared in the [Araja] opera Il finto Nino,ovvero La Semiramide riconosciuta (1737). She left St. Petersburg shortly thereafter.Themost important person in that Italian company was the composer Francesco Araja, whowas invited to Russia in 1735 and remained in Russian service until 1759. During thatperiod he wrote many operatic and concert works, of which only a few date from AnnaIoannovna’s reign. For that [earlier] period, we can establish the following repertory ofmusical and dramatic works staged at the court theater as listed in Table 13.1.12A Thefollowing works should also be added to those listed in the table: (1) an unknownintermedio (probably Italian, with musical numbers) staged on 7 September 1736 in theSummer Palace, according to the printed report in the Spb. vedomosti 1736, no. 36;12B (2)an Italian pastorale, title also unknown, staged on 5 July 1739 (Spb. vedomosti, no. 55);and (3) the ballets that were performed between the acts of the operas, as mentioned byStählin.TABLE 13.1. Operatic Performances during Anna Ioannovna’s Reign (1730–40)TheAraja operas included in Table 13.1 were the first to be staged in Russia and werecomposed by the Italian master for that purpose [see n. 12A]. That each of them waspresented on 29 January, the day after Anna’s birthday, confirms the character of theItalian operatic theater, which served as an especially festive ornament at courtcelebrations, and not as a permanent theatrical enterprise. We have some informationconcerning the production of the first of these operas. The libretto of La forza dell’amore edell’odio, the first printed libretto in Russia, was available in the Academy of Sciencesbookstore several days before the performance.13 It was printed in Italian and in Russian.In the Spb. vedomosti of 2 February 1736, no. 10, we read:Last Monday, on the 29th [ofJanuary], the court opera company performed the beautiful and lavish opera titled Silaliubvi i nenavisti in the Winter Palace, to the great pleasure of Her Imperial Majesty and tothe universal praise of viewers. The poem was written by Cavaliere F. P. . . . in Rome; themusic was composed by the court Kapellmeister Signor Araja; the decorations weredesigned by Ieronim [Girolamo] Bon, theatrical painter at court; and the ballet was byDirector Signor Antonio Rinaldi.Stählin confirms the success of La forza dell’amore, writingthat: “The court accepted this opera with much applause and with great pleasure. Theenthusiasm on the occasion of this new spectacle was expressed by the fact that all theboxes and the parterre were filled to overflowing; it had to be repeated about 100 timesand several times with equal success.”14 Stählin’s testimony, as that of a contemporarywitness, is important and is further valuable because of its information concerning thecast of this first Italian opera in Russia. It suffers nevertheless from exaggeration, whichmay be ascribed to Stählin’s zeal in executing his duty. We have no documentary proofthat the opera was repeated “100 times,” and, in the performance itself, it would scarcelybe possible to repeat anything so many times. C. H. Manstein, another contemporary and

author of the well-known Notes on Russia, states that “the first opera, although it wentvery well, did not give as much pleasure as the Italian comedies and intermedi.”14A Theliveliness of action and performance must have attracted the ladies and gentlemen atcourt, who had by now become accustomed to these comedies and intermedi. Accordingto Stählin, in place of the intermedi, which usually served to shorten the intermissions,after each act of the opera there were “marvelous ballets composed by Antonio Rinaldi,Girolamo Bon, and Giovanni Tarsia.”14B Stählin also preserved the names of the castmembers of this historic performance:Sofit, Indian EmperorAbiazar, husband of Nirena(Sofit’s daughter)Nirena, Sofit’s daughterBarzant, Sofit’s allyTaksil, Barzant’s nephewFilippoGiorgiCaterina GiorgiMlle Massani [Masani or Mazany]Perdicci [Petricci]the castratoMorigiWe do not know who performed the roles of Talestria (Abiazar’s sister) and Merind(one of Sofit’s friends). At that time there were two more female singers in the Italiancompany, Avoglio and Ruvinetti, and one of them may have sung the role of Talestria. Theproducer was Giuseppe Avoglio.Stählin gives a detailed description of the ballets betweenthe acts of La forza dell’amore. Following act 1, “satyrs and gardeners, both male andfemale, danced in a handsome ballet”; act 2 was followed by a “marvelous ballet in theJapanese style”; and after act 3, “more than 100 people came down from the uppergalleries of this wonderful structure and danced to the accompaniment of agreeablesinging by the performers and instrumental music by the entire orchestra, performing thepleasing ballet that ended the main opera.” The music for this final ballet was probablywritten by Araja; the composers for the other two ballets are unknown.A year later Araja’ssecond opera, Il finto Nino, ovvero La Semiramide riconosciuta, was staged. The librettowas by abbé Pietro Metastasio, the well-known librettist of operas by Gluck, Pergolesi, andmany other famous composers. It was published in Italian, Russian, and German, and thetranslation into the “Russian dialect” was by Pyotr Mikhailov. According to Stählin, thefemale lead, Semiramide, was sung by Mlle Piantanida, nicknamed La Pasterla, who wasas fine an actress as she was a singer.15Only two printed notices are preserved about theperformance of Araja’s third opera, Artaserse. The Spb. vedomosti records that on 29January 1738, “at the theater in the Imperial Winter Palace, a marvelous opera wasproduced especially for this important celebration (the empress’s birthday), titledArtakserks ili za vernost’ syna pozhalovannyi otets (Spb. vedomosti 1738, no. 9). Thenewspaper notes that the opera was repeated on 30 April to celebrate Anna Ioannovna’scoronation day, and that on that occasion, “in place of the usual intermezzi, there weremarvelous ballets” (Spb. vedomosti, no. 53). The printed libretto, in the Russian translationby P. Medvedev, was also published before the performance.The first article on music inthe Russian press appeared in 1738, namely, Jacob von Stählin’s “Istoricheskoe opisanieonago teatral’nago deistviia, kotoroe nazyvaetsia opera” [Historical description of thetheatrical performance known as opera].15A Here is how the author defines theconception of musical-dramatic works:Opera is a show performed by means of singing.Except for gods and courageous heroes, it does not allow anyone else on stage.Everything in it is noble, magnificent, and amazing. In its contents, nothing can be found

save sublime and incomparable deeds, divine qualities in man, a blissful state of theworld, in fact it depicts a golden age. To represent primeval days and the uncorruptedhappiness of the human race, happy shepherds and contented shepherdesses aresometimes introduced into opera. Their agreeable songs and wonderful dances representthe merry, friendly gatherings of kindly people. By means of clever machinery, operapresents to us the splendor of the heavens and the beauty of the universe; on the earth,[it presents] the strength and valor man displays when besieging cities; on the tossing sea,the terrors and calamities of rashly daring men; and through Phaethon’s fall, the downfallof reckless pride. By means of music, the language in which the human passions areexpressed is brought to perfection, and the sounds of the accompanying instrumentsexcite in listeners those very feelings which are then revealed before their eyes. We mustmention a special kind of action presented by means of singing, called intermedio, whichwas introduced some forty years ago in Italy. To the inhabitants of that country, who werealways looking for new amusements, opera was much too serious. They therefore deviseda new kind of performance which has nothing to do with the seriousness of opera, but hasparticularly cheerful content and can sometimes be divided into two, or sometimes three,parts. In such intermedi there are usually only two persons, namely Buffo and Buffa, whodepict various amusing situations by means of arias and recitatives, and, by doing so, theyprovide the viewers, as well as the opera singers, a respite from grand productions. Noteveryone is suited to appear in the intermedi; very special performers are required for theproduction of these lively musical shows, able by bodily movements and by their singingto simulate comical figures of all sorts. The cantata arose from a combination ofrecitatives and arias on a small scale, and, on a large scale, Drama in all its various forms[arose]. When such a work was presented by only two performers, it was called a Dialog,that is, a conversation set to music, but if three or four persons were used, it was knownas an Operetta, that is, a small drama; such were the pastorales, eclogues, or pastoralshows set to music. When the complete performance consisting of many persons wasstaged, then it was called a large drama set to music, that is, the whole show orOpera.Stählin’s printed explanation of the essence of opera as an artistic work coincidedwith the discontinuation of Italian operatic performances in St. Petersburg. Clearly thearticle was intended to convey to operatic audiences an informed relationship to thedelights of music and theater, although this was a rather primitive and superficial attempt.The very appearance of Stählin’s article has historical significance, despite that it appearedtoo late for any practical results.In the spring of 1738, after the performance of Artaserse,the operatic troupe and many members of the court orchestra left Russia. No operas werestaged during the last two years of Anna’s reign, although Araja’s services were retained.Caroline Neuber’s German dramatic company, imported during the spring of 1740, wasunsuccessful, despite the support of the local pro-German party headed by the all-powerful Biron.15B This company did not stage operas, although its repertory may haveincluded some small Singspiele. Musical entertainments were limited to court concerts,intermedi, and pastoral plays, which did not require elaborate staging or large casts.The

Italian troupe’s vocalists are listed above.16 We should present the full list of musicians inthe service of the Imperial court during Anna’s reign before moving on to the activities ofthe court orchestra. The list is quite impressive, but one should exclude the orchestraleaders as well as some other artists from the substantial circle of regular musicians in theensemble.17 The first civil list of the court troupe as authorized in December 1731 alreadyshows the court orchestra as follows:18Harpsichordist Guerra400 r.Bassoonist Glösch [orGlötsch]250 r.Bassoonist Friedrich300 r.Oboist Döbbert300 r.Verocai, violinist1,000r.Vaspari [Gasparo Janeschi], violinist1,000 r.Concertmaster Johann Hübner450 r.Chamber-musician and composer Andreas Hübner450 r.Johann Pomorskii292 r.Frants Rumps180r.Hendrich [Heinrich] Schwartz180 r.Johann Gottfried Rose150 r.Iakov Medlin200 r.Iulius[Elius]140 r.Johann Bruntz150 r.Bartolomeus Shlakovskii150 r.Iagan Straus [JohannStrauss]150 r.Kashper Kuchert250 r.Iagan Zeik140 r.Samoila Fater [Vater]150 r.IaganKliber150 r.Georgii Pomorskii180 r.Iagan Kerner180 r.Tobias Mikhler180 r.JohannRiedel450 r.Pupil of Concertmaster Hübner50 r.Trubachi [trumpeters]:HendrickNorman200 r.Fridrikh Venstern200 r.Gotfrid Boritsius180 r.Iakov Venstern180 r.KarlHolmstern192 r.Grigorii Mazura170 r.Horn Players [valtornisty]Anton Shmit [Schmidt]220r.Moris Volkonskii220 r.Fridrikh Uberscher150 r.Two new players, each at250r.Percussionists [litavrshchiki]Iagan Karl Vinter [Winter]200 r.Fyodor Ivanov theblackamoor100 r.Andrei Vinter [Winter]100 r.Other musicians were added to these,including the Madonis and Dall’Oglio brothers, outstanding virtuosi who apparentlyentered Russian service at the same time as did composer and conductor FrancescoAraja.The first truly eminent musician in Russian service was Johann Hübner, whom wehave already mentioned several times. He was court Kapellmeister during Anna’s reign,Francesco Araja’s predecessor in that position. Hübner was born in Warsaw in 1696. Histalent must have revealed itself rather early, for he received his first musical training whilestill in Warsaw, which had a highly developed musical culture at that time. In 1714 Hübnerwent to Vienna, where he studied with the well-known violinist and teacher Rosetter; sixyears later, according to some sources, he went with Rosetter to Russia as conductor ofCount Kinsky’s band.18A Kinsky was the Austrian ambassador to the Russian court, andapparently had become acquainted with Hübner in Vienna. As we know, Hübner’s bandattracted considerable attention in Moscow, and on Kinsky’s return to Vienna in July 1721,Hübner and the band (or at least a part of it) transferred their services to the Duke ofHolstein, who was betrothed to Anna, one of Peter I’s daughters. According to Bergholz,the Holstein band which, as we know, originally consisted of a few horn players, began togrow.18B Bergholz’s diary entry for 4 September 1722 states that “during and after dinnerthere was fine music, and our Hübner and his companions made every effort to excel.”Hübner distinguished himself especially during the coronation [of Catherine I], for whichhe conducted an exceptionally large orchestra of sixty musicians.18C After the Duke ofHolstein departed for Kiel, Hübner entered into Russian service, and his name appears inthe first civil list of musicians issued during Anna Ioannovna’s reign, when he was listed asconcertmaster with a salary of 450 rubles. An unknown pupil, who received 50 rubles and

who also played in the court orchestra, was listed with him, indicating that Hübner hadstarted his teaching activities by that time.With Araja’s invitation to St. Petersburg asconductor and composer of court operas, Hübner involuntarily receded into thebackground and had to be content with conducting a ballroom orchestra. On 10 January1740, however, an edict was issued concerning the establishment of a class ofinstrumentalists attached to the court orchestra, under Hübner’s direction. Thus Hübner,in addition to being known as the first civilian, rather than military, conductor in Russia, isalso connected with the founding of Russia’s first musical-pedagogical institute. Here isthe text of the imperial decree addressed to Grand Marshal R. Loewenwolde:Whereas it isnot unknown that among the twelve older foreign musicians employed by our court, somehave been employed for quite some time and are of a very advanced age, and, as aconsequence, on special and ceremonial and other days when a ball is held at our court,[they] are not present, nor can [they] be, therefore in the music there are inadequaciesand in order to remedy them it becomes necessary to summon and use musicians fromother ensembles, we hereby order that henceforth for our court orchestra there beavailable up to twelve Little Russian youths skilled in reading music who, for the needs ofthe court orchestra, will be taught by concertmaster Johann Hübner on variousinstruments as necessary. And for such music and instruments and the rest that isrequired, and for these pupils’ apartments, candles, paper for music as well as ink, theywill receive [funds] from our court Fiscal Office. Also for the salary and food for thesepupils until the completion of their training, they will be paid forty rubles per year; besidesthat they will receive annually a full dress cloth coat, caftans, short jackets, and trousers ofgreen cloth which will cost no more than a ruble per arshin [1 arshin = 28 inches]; alsoonce in three years to receive a cloak either in cornflower-blue or green cloth that costs nomore than seventy kopecks per arshin, from the paymaster’s office; and in the educationof the recruited pupils, Hübner is to take good care so that each one may attain the realand fundamental knowledge in not too long a time; and if some achieve good progress, itis up to Hübner to present them and those who prove to be zealous to be givenadvantages with increase of salary and, according to their skill, to designate them to fillthe vacated posts and give them the pay rate of regular musicians; and if, on the contrary,there are pupils who turn out to be incapable of learning this skill, Hübner is immediatelyto take action.Anna19At first the orchestra school was located on the St. Petersburg side,in the parish of the Church of St. Nicholas the Miracle-worker in the house of a merchantnamed Nikifor Il’in, and in the following year it was moved to a house near the KazanChurch on Nevskii Prospekt. Hübner lived there himself, occupying three rooms. Foursmall rooms were allotted to the students, and their lessons were given in a large room.20On 15 January 1741 a new edict was issued increasing the number of students to fifteen.The later fate of Hübner and his school is unknown.20AFrancesco Araja (b. 1700 in Naples,d. 1767 in Bologna) was the first opera composer and conductor in Russia, where he spentthe greater, and most important, part of his musical life. The success of his first operas,Berenice (1730) and Amore regnante (1731), in Tuscany and Rome attracted some notice,

or perhaps the young Araja may simply have preferred a secure position in a foreigncountry to the gradual conquest of the Italian stages—at any rate, in 1735 he and therecently engaged Italian singers departed for St. Petersburg. There he managed to retainhis position through two imperial reigns (not counting the years of Anna Leopol’dovna’sregency). Even when the Italian troupe was dismissed in Anna Ioannovna’s reign, andwhen French fashions prevailed and Russian artistic works began to put forth their firstshoots in Elizabeth Petrovna’s time, Araja served here for nearly twenty-five years, until1759. He returned to Bologna, but soon after Elizabeth’s death [in 1761] he came back toRussia with the hope of regaining his former position. At that time, however, it wasHermann Raupach who, from 1756, had become the dominant figure. Raupach had begunhis service under Araja, and even though Araja was personally known to Catherine II, hewas forced to return to Bologna, where he died. It is quite likely that Catherine did notwish to have a musician at her court who had served under her late husband, Peter III,and Araja, as can be seen in Catherine’s Memoirs, had taken an active part in the weeklyconcerts given when Peter was prince and heir to the throne.Araja’s activities as acomposer were of considerable importance for Russia at the time. He wrote the followingoperas:1736La forza dell’amore e dell’odio1737Il finto Nino, ovvero La Semiramide riconosciuta1738Artaserse1744Seleuco1745Scipione1747Mitridate1750Bellerofonte1751Eudossiaincoronata, o sia Teodosio II1755Tsefal i Prokris [Cephal and Procrys]1755Alessandronell’IndieThere are no accurate data about the staging of his other operas: Arsace,Antigona abandonnata (1757), Ifigenia in Tauride (1758), and others.20B He also wrote thefollowing cantatas for special festive occasions: “La gara dell’amore e del zelo,” a cantatafor two voices and chorus composed for the celebration of Anna Ioannovna’s coronationday, 28 April 1736;21 the cantata “Junon secourable Lucine” (French text by Denzi, Russiantranslation by Lomonosov), composed on the occasion of Princess Anna Petrovna’s birth(1757); and “Urania vaticinante,” a “cantata with choruses performed before the ballet ofthe rejoicing people; verses by Antonio Denzi.”22 Araja certainly wrote other works whilein Russia, but we do not know exactly what they were. Robert Eitner (Quellen-Lexikon1:182) mentions some arias from 1735 in a manuscript collection in the Dresden RoyalLibrary, as well as Capricci for harpsichord [clavichord] (in the Royal Library in Berlin) and aprinted harpsichord sonata.As we see, the court valued Araja’s various activities highly. Wedo not know what his salary was, but for some of his operas (in 1737 and 1738) hereceived special honoraria at the rate of five hundred rubles per opera, and the sameamount for the cantata “La gara dell’amore e del zelo” when, on 12 February 1736, hepresented his “musical books” to the empress.23 For Tsefal, he received not only fivehundred rubles but also a sable coat. The staging of this work, in Elizabeth Petrovna’sreign, must be regarded as a special event in the Russian theatrical world, as it was thefirst opera with a Russian-language libretto. This fact, as well as the composition andstaging of our first Italian operas in Russia, mark Araja’s importance in the history ofRussian music. [Findeizen discusses the opera in chapter 18.]Eminent musicians wereassociated with the court orchestra at various times during Anna Ioannovna’s reign,

among them the violinists Verocai, Janeschi, Domenico Dall’Oglio, Luigi Madonis and hisbrother, the horn player Antonio Madonis, the cellist Giuseppe Dall’Oglio, and others.Thefirst of these, Giovanni Verocai, was a native of Italy who was in Breslau in 1727 and fromthere was invited to Dresden. He went to Moscow in 1731 with Kayser, and, while there,married Kayser’s daughter. According to the 1731 civil list, Verocai received the highestsalary paid to a musician: one thousand rubles. Stählin mentioned his participation in theorchestra at the first staging of Araja’s opera. Verocai remained in St. Petersburg until1738, when he and most of the Italian company left Russia. In 1741 he became theKapellmeister of the Duke of Braunschweig; he is known to have composed symphonies,two operas (Demofoonte and Catone in Utica), pieces for violin, and other works.23AGasparo Janeschi served in Russia from 1731 and he died there in 1758. He appears in thecivil list for 1731 under the name of Vaspari; his salary was the same as Verocai’s, onethousand rubles.The Dall’Oglio and Madonis brothers served in Russia for longer periodsand left more perceptible traces. All four were apparently enlisted at the same time, in1735. The violinist and composer Domenico Dall’Oglio and his brother, the cellistGiuseppe, were born in Padua, probably at the end of the seventeenth century. Accordingto Stählin, both played in the orchestra for the production of Araja’s La forza dell’amore edell’odio. Domenico was well known for his chamber works (XII Sonate à Violino eVioloncello o Cembalo, op. l), composed in St. Petersburg around 1738 and printed inAmsterdam. These are among the earliest chamber works written and performed inRussia. Eitner (Quellen-Lexikon 6:230) mistakenly ascribes to Dall’Oglio the music forStählin’s coronation prologue text (1742); it was actually composed by Luigi Madonis.Domenico Dall’Oglio died suddenly at Narva on his return trip to Italy in 1764. His brother,Giuseppe, also served in St. Petersburg until 1764, when he left for Warsaw. FilippoDall’Occa, a harpsichordist, served at court from 1786 (d. 1841), and his brother, thedouble bass player Antonio Dall’Occa, served from 1798 (d. 1831). Both were well-knownmusicians.23BLuigi Madonis (b. 1700 in Venice, d. ca. 1770) was a concertmaster from1735 (according to other sources, from 1731) until January 1767, when he retired on anannual pension of 500 rubles. According to data in my archive, Madonis, at the beginningof his service, received a salary of 1,050 rubles annually, a considerable sum in those days.Moreover, during Elizabeth Petrovna’s reign, Madonis’s wife, Natalia Petrovna, receivedfrom the Salt Office a salary or pension of 600 rubles annually. Madonis’s virtuosity waswitnessed by the famous flautist Quantz, who heard him in Venice in 1725. From Venice,Madonis went to Breslau as the conductor of an opera company; in 1729 he appeared inParis at the famous Concert spirituel. His violin concerti and a sonata were published inParis. In Russia, Madonis was active as a virtuoso player and a composer.Stählin, in his“Nachrichten von der Musik in Russland,” gives very brief and not quite reliableinformation about some of Madonis’s Russian works. This information was then almostliterally reprinted in a translation by V. K. in his article “History of Music in Russia” and by V.Mikhnevich in An Essay on the History of Music in Russia.23C Stählin states in paragraph36 of his article that during Elizabeth’s reign, “Concertmaster Madonis had some half a

dozen of his newly composed violin concerti engraved in St. Petersburg”; furthermore,that Madonis “got the idea to write a couple of symphonies alla Russa, which were sosuccessful that one of them was always performed at the regular concerts at receptions[kurtagi]. He selected some of the most common (gemeinsten) rustic melodies or peasantsongs and united them with excellent passaggio writing [“mit immer vorkommendenPassagen”] in the best Italian taste, in Allegro, Andante, and Presto. Madonis also wrotetwo sonatas on Ukrainian themes.”23DThese statements are not quite accurate. Leavingaside the “couple of symphonies” and the sonatas on Ukrainian themes, it should benoted that during Anna Ioannovna’s reign Madonis published twelve violin sonatas, whichhe called symphonies, in St. Petersburg. This was in 1738, but Stählin did not refer tothese works, although he had been in Russian service since 1735. The problem ofMadonis’s St. Petersburg compositions could not have been solved earlier, since theextremely rare copy of his sonatas has only recently been found in the Public Library by A.N. Rimskii-Korsakov.24 On the title page they are described as “Twelve diversesymphonies for violin and bass [Douze diverses symphonies à violon et basse], composedand presented to Her Imperial Majesty, the Empress of all the Russias, Anna Ioannovna, byLudvik Madonis, violinist in Her Imperial Majesty’s service, most humbly presented in St.Petersburg, 1738.”These are actually normal contemporary violin sonatas, with a figuredbass accompaniment; each piece is called a sonata. This kind of sonata was, until theacceptance of sonata form in our understanding of the term, written by all the earlyItalian, French, and German masters. They represented a series of little suites, consistingof a few short sections including, apart from the customary introductory adagio,traditional chamber concert arrangements of old song and dance rhythms: sarabande,siciliana, menuet, gigue, and so forth [that is, the sonata da camera type]. It is significantfor our purposes that the first and fifth sonatas represent probably the first appearance inRussia of the 6/8 siciliana rhythm.24A Soon thereafter, or perhaps at the same time, thisrhythm was taken up by the composers of our three-part kanty, and it eventuallypenetrated into the “Russian song” and opera, where it persisted for a considerable time.It should also be noted that despite his brief service at the Russian court (1735–37), LuigiMadonis was so sensitive and talented a musician that he turned his attention to Russianfolk melodies. It was not an easy matter for an unprepared foreign ear to accept suchmusic, and it is not difficult to understand that the melodies underwent some distortionas they were written down, being fitted into Italian rhythmic patterns and “arranged” intoviolinistic runs that belonged completely to the Western virtuosic manner. Nevertheless,in some of the themes, or at least in a few bars in these themes, one can sense thecurrent of folk melody that attracted the Italian violinist-composer. Such are, apparently,the Capriccio motifs in the First Sonata; the Mezzo manico in the Third Sonata; a few barsof the Allegro in the Fourth; the Cantabile and bars 23–28 of the Capriccio of the Sixth; thetheme of the Menuet in the Tenth; and the Allegro variazioni of the Eleventh. One shouldkeep in mind, of course, that the music was engraved with unquestionable and significanterrors, which is understandable as this was one of the very first attempts at music

engraving in Russia.In addition to sonatas and symphonies, Luigi Madonis composedmusic for Stählin’s prologue “Rossiia po pechali paki obradovannaia” [After sorrow, Russiaonce more rejoices], written for Elizabeth Petrovna’s coronation (1742); the music has notyet been found. Among other biographical information about this virtuoso and composer,we know that in 1739 Madonis went to Italy on leave of absence but was back in Russia byOctober 1740, for his name figures in the list of artists who swore allegiance to IvanAntonovich [Ivan VI]. In the last years of his life, Madonis appears to have suffered amental breakdown. In the well-known memoirs of S. A. Poroshin, Tsarevich PaulPetrovich’s tutor, there is a curious entry on 7 July 1765, when Poroshin and his pupil werereturning from Ekaterinhof: “after crossing the Kalinkin Bridge, they saw the mad Madonisat a window. The Grand Duke stopped and they made him play the violin; he did performone of his newer compositions, but it was not a good performance.”25 Madonisnevertheless continued to serve or was retained in service until 12 January 1767, when byorder of the empress, he was pensioned off to receive five hundred rubles from the SaltOffice annually.26 His brother, Antonio Madonis, although he also played the violin, wasfamous as a horn player. He served under Anna Ioannovna and Elizabeth as a courtmusician.The fates of other members of the court orchestra are also of interest. We comeacross several generations of orchestral musicians in Russian service belonging to thePomorskii family.26A The first was Johann [or Ivan] Pomorskii, apparently a violinist, whoserved under Peter I. He was Kapellmeister in the court orchestra under Anna Ioannovnaand, according to the 1731 civil list, received 292 rubles. Georgii Pomorskii, probably hisbrother, served at the same time with a salary of 180 rubles. In Elizabeth’s and Catherine’sreigns, Grigorii Pomorskii (1721–1790s) and Nikolai Pomorskii, violinist, composer, andauthor of the opera Pigmalion, ili Sila liubvi [Pigmalion, or the power of love] (Moscow,1779) served as chamber musicians [kamer-muzykanty]. Nikolai entered service in 1763and served until the early 1800s (d. 4 October 1804). The Dall’Oglios and the Pomorskiisthus gave Russia a series of fairly eminent instrumentalists.Another violinist worthy ofmention is Pietro Mira, an Italian who, as we know, soon exchanged his musical professionfor that of a court jester. A Neapolitan by birth (from Monte Scaglioso), he was a citymusician in Lucca from 1725 to 1733.27 In 1733 he, along with a group of Italians, arrivedin St. Petersburg, where he began his profession by joining an orchestra and playing buffoparts in intermedi. According to some reports, Mira did not get along with KapellmeisterAraja and transferred himself to the jesters. This may have happened in 1735 or 1736. Hisadventures in his new profession have nothing to do with our investigations; suffice it tosay that Pedrillo (as he was now called) earned what was then a handsome income. Hiscrowning joke, passing a goat off as his wife, was the subject of an illustration in apolemical treatise by Trömer, mentioned earlier. This treatise, incidentally, includes aportrait of Mira-Pedrillo with a violin [fig. 103]. Anna Ioannovna was so fond of this jesterand had such confidence in him that she chose him as her partner in card games, and in1736 she even commissioned him to correspond with the feeble-minded Duke of Tuscanyconcerning the purchase of the famous Tuscany diamond. After Anna’s death, during the

short reign of the unlucky Ivan Antonovich, Mira was given leave to return to his nativeland together with his servant, Francesco Piccoli (17 December 1740).28 He subsequentlyjoined the Dresden cappella (ca. 1747), but seems to have become a hotel keeper inVenice toward the end of his life.29FIG. 103. Violinist Pietro Mira, the jester Pedrillo atAnna Ioannovna’s court [from a contemporary print].In addition to orchestral musicians,harpsichordists were also included in the court orchestra. According to the civil list of1731, the first of them, Guerra, was paid four hundred rubles, almost as much as theHübner brothers. Guerra was succeeded by Gertrude Koenig, who worked at court around1738.30 We currently have no information on their repertory, but there is no doubt that, inaddition to obligatory participation in the opera orchestra, the keyboard players alsoappeared at chamber recitals at which compositions by Domenico Dall’Oglio, LuigiMadonis, and others were performed, as well as works by resident specialist composerssuch as Andreas Hübner and Francesco Araja.The orchestra played the role of anindispensable ornament of the new “Europeanized” court that Anna Ioannovna wished tocreate in St. Petersburg, but there were also other musical diversions at the empress’sdisposal for her private, domestic use. As in previous times, there were variousperformers on folk instruments at court. In the early 1730s we find the gusli playersMan’kovskii and Kiriak Kondratovich.31 The outstanding bandura player TimofeiBelogradskii was employed in 1739. Belogradskii was a Little Russian by birth and at onetime had lived abroad, in Berlin and Dresden, where he had been taken by the Russianambassador, Count Keizerling, in 1733. In Dresden Belogradskii was a pupil of thecelebrated lutenist Weiss.31A On 23 November 1739 Belogradskii entered Russian servicewith a salary of five hundred rubles and furnished quarters in the old Winter Palace.According to Stählin, Belogradskii “played the most difficult solos and concerti and couldaccompany himself when he sang arias, which he performed with great power andinspiration after the schooling of Annibali, Faustina, and others, with whom he becameacquainted in Dresden; his voice was sopralto.”32 Belogradskii remained in service until1767, when he was awarded the large pension of 1,000 rubles. The singer OsipBelogradskii, presumably Timofei’s brother, also began his service during Anna’s reign andlater became the director of singers under Peter III [r. 1761–62].33 Osip’s daughter,Elizaveta Osipovna Belogradskaia (b. 1739), was the first Russian operatic singer inElizabeth Petrovna’s reign, creating the role of Procrys in Araja’s Tsefal i Prokris in 1755. Inaddition to Timofei Belogradskii, in the last years of Anna’s reign the bandura playerErmolai Sankevich (or Sankeev?) was employed at court. According to the 1746 civil list, hereceived 150 rubles annually and had living quarters in the orangerie of the SummerPalace. Court orders indicate that he was paid a bonus of 15 rubles for his service atyearly holidays and at special functions.34 Thus court employees all received special fees,as this was the custom.In the last years of Anna’s reign, after the dismissal of the Italianoperatic troupe, one finds a great variety of musical diversions at court, for which nativeresources began to be used. It was for this purpose, we know, that Johann Hübner’sinstrumental music class was established. In addition to Belogradskii, in 1740 nine

Moldavian musicians sent by the Moldavian ruler arrived in St. Petersburg. Their namesare known, for on 17 October 1740 they swore allegiance to Ivan Antonovich; on 15November they received two rubles each for taking part in the greeting festivities for theRegent, Anna Leopol’dovna, on her assumption of the Russian Imperial government; andon 6 January 1741 they were sent home and given ten rubles each “for subsistence ontheir journey . . . and money for the hire of seventeen stage-carts to take them from St.Petersburg to Kiev.”35 The Moldavian orchestra may have been sent to participate in theIce Palace festivities. Also appearing at court in 1740 was Ivan Murzin and his companions,an orchestra of six musicians from Chancellor Golovkin’s band, which had twelve men.They received one hundred rubles for playing, and each received a ruble for the 1741 NewYear’s greetings. These musicians continued to play at court in 1741, and in 1742 Murzinjoined the ranks of court musicians. He died in 1773.36We should note as well that in St.Petersburg, in addition to the court orchestra, there was an ensemble associated withPrincess Elizabeth Petrovna, and there were also additional bandura and gusli players ather court. The leader of the orchestra, which consisted of eight members, was IuriiStrauss, and the other members were Anton Davydov, Ivan Dukhovskoi, FyodorZavetovskii, Ivan Katenskii, Mikhail Mikhailov, Matvei Petrov, Ivan Timofeev, and AlekseiIablonskii. The nature of their employment and their salaries are unknown. Their salariesand board allowance were provided from court funds and, like the members of the courtorchestra, these musicians received a gratuity for annual celebrations and variousadditional feasts. The Kapellmeister received two rubles on such occasions and themusicians received a ruble each. Elizabeth’s two bandura players, Liubistik and Nizhevich,and her gusli players, Sozon and Grigorii Cherniakhovskii, appear to have enjoyed a muchbetter situation. Judging from court expense records, one can see that for similarperformances they received ten, fifteen, and twenty rubles each. All of them, of course,appeared on 9 November 1740 to congratulate Regent Anna Leopol’dovna on her“acceptance” of the rule of the Russian Empire.37Along with the court instrumental group,there was also a court vocal ensemble. The court singers were an independent, closelyknit organization which inherited the traditions of the old sovereign singers [gosudarevypevchie d’iaki]. Documents preserved in the former Moscow archives of the Ministry ofJustice describe their situation and transmit interesting data concerning their lives.38 Itappears from these records that religious services were held regularly in the chapels ofboth the Winter Palace and the Summer Palace in the 1740s. The staff included a priest,two choir leaders [psalomshchiki], and twenty-four singers and monks. The choir masters[ustavshchiki] received nonofficial pay [i.e., they were not on the civil list]; they stood atthe head of the choir, apparently one each for each side of the kliros, or perhaps one foreach of the court churches. Vasilii Evdokimov, the choir master in the 1720s, had a seriesof short-term successors who are mentioned in the expense accounts toward the end ofAnna’s reign. In addition to their pay, the singers and choir masters received a boardallowance on a strictly defined scale.39 In the late 1730s choir master Fyodor Zhuravskiihad a board allowance of 20 iufty of bread, in addition to his salary of 250 rubles. Toward

the end of 1740 or early in 1741, Zhuravskii retired from court employment and was sentto Kiev to take monastic orders; he was awarded a gratuity of 100 rubles (edict of 31March 1741). In January 1740 Andrei Nizhegorodets, one of Peter’s singers, becameustavshchik, although he died shortly thereafter (in December 1740?). His successor, Il’iaTomilin, was then appointed choir master, according to the edict of 29 December 1740. Hewas one of the “Great Russian singers” and had an annual salary of 250 rubles. Tomilinwas dismissed in September 1741 and was succeeded by hieromonk Ilarion. Choirmasters and singers had furnished quarters in the old Winter Palace.In addition to thechoir masters, the court singers in that period had yet another supervisor, a monk whoheaded the civil list of the clergy attached to the court and whose salary and allowanceswere higher than those of any other cleric in court service. Until March 1741 hieromonkGerasim was the superior of the court singers. He was later promoted to the rank ofarchimandrite and his position was taken by Ioasaf, a monk (in documents he is alsocalled a hieromonk), who was allotted a salary of 150 rubles and an allowance of 25 yuftyof bread. Archival documents refer to him as “a monk recently arrived from Kiev,” althoughoriginally he had been summoned to court from the Akhtyrskii Monastery in the Belgoroddiocese, where he had been a bass singer and ustavshchik. He was given two rooms in theold Winter Palace and was provided with clothes, in addition to the salary notedabove.During Ioasaf’s directorship, the court singers were selected primarily from LittleRussians. In Ukraine, namely in Glukhovo, there was a singing school supervised by aspecial precentor [regent], and it was there that students received their primary musicaltraining before becoming court singers. This school was established by an edict from AnnaIoannovna as communicated to her cabinet on 14 January 1741 by General in Chief IakovKeit (who replaced the hetman). The edict stated that children should be recruited “fromthe whole of Little Russia, from the sons of ecclesiastics, Cossacks, the middle classes, andothers. There should be as many as twenty students at the school at all times, choosingthe best singers. Their teacher is to be instructed to teach Kievan chant and part[partesnoe] singing; and from those who master the chanting, every year ten of the bestwill be sent to the court of Her Imperial Majesty, and in their places new ones are to beadded.” The director of the school at that time was Fyodor Iavorovskii, who trained andsent to St. Petersburg eleven of the singers.40The salaries on the civil list were usuallypaid to the singers in three installments, in January, May, and September. Like themembers of the instrumental ensemble, in addition to their salaries the singers receivedgratuities, special allowances, and provisions of various kinds and in quantities that greatlyexceeded their annual salaries. On entering service they received a full dress coat [whichwas to last] for two years. The daily uniform of the court singers was a kaftan [a longtunic] and trousers of green cloth, and a short kaftan made of kitaika [a cotton cloth] withcolored lining from public stores. The kaftan was sewn with green silk-cord with silkbuttons. The dress coat for feasts was apparently made of red or raspberry-colored cloth,for in the court expense books there are notes about the quartermaster’s purchases ofthis kind of cloth to have festive coats made for some of the singers. On retirement the

singers usually retained their dress coats. Their discharge was formalized by specialdecrees of the St. Petersburg Office of the Court because of loss of voice, incapacitation,or appointment to other tasks, as mentioned earlier, for example, when singers decidedto take monastic orders.In Anna Ioannovna’s reign, we have thus noted the growth ofcultural activities, not only the establishment of the court theater (Italian opera) and theinstrumental ensemble but also the formation of two pedagogical institutions: theinstrumental classes in St. Petersburg and the music school in Glukhovo. Both actuallyexisted, even if they did not last very long.Among the other musical firsts, so numerous inAnna Ioannovna’s reign, one should mention the construction of a large organ, withresources contributed by “august personages,” in the Lutheran St. Petri Kirche inPetersburg. The dedication of this organ was quite a festive event. The Spb. vedomosti(no. 104) reports that on 27 December 1737 there took place,in the Lutheran cathedralchurch of Peter and Paul in St. Petersburg, the consecration of the great and magnificentorgan built by means of contributions from Her Imperial Majesty, Her Highness theImperial Princess Anna (Leopol’dovna) and Her Serene Highness the Reigning Duchess ofCourland (the wife of Biron), and also by public donations. The festivity was attended byHer Imperial Highness the Tsesarevna Elizabeth Petrovna, the Imperial Princess Anna, HerGrace the Duchess of Courland with the Crown Prince of Courland, and Prince vonBraunschweig and many distinguished persons, who stayed not only for the spokenportion but also to hear the specially prepared music.This church and its organistssubsequently played a significant role in the capital’s musical life, which is why theconstruction of this large organ so long ago is of interest. The first organist of the St. PetriKirche seems to have been Joachim Bernard Wilde (d. 1762), who was also one of the firstmanufacturers and dealers in musical instruments in old St. Petersburg.41 Before Wilde,instruments were sold by the bell foundryman Johann Christian Foerster, who in 1733advertised that he had “two clavecins for sale at a low price, with a sound suitable forchamber performance; interested persons can negotiate with him at his home, and helives not far from the Stone Public Bath” (Spb. vedomosti, no. 80). Johann ChristianFoerster was another of the period’s interesting personalities. He entered Russian servicearound 1710 as a bell founder under Peter I and distinguished himself by inventing aspecial pedal for playing the bells. In Catherine I’s account books, an entry states that “atPeterhof the clock maker Foerster played on crystal bells,” for which the tsaritsa paid himfour ducats. During Anna Ioannovna’s reign, he began to sell and later to manufacturekeyboard instruments. Thus the bell founder Foerster (ca. 1733) and the organist Wilde(ca. 1737) were the first to make instruments in St. Petersburg; earlier Russian musiclovers had ordered instruments from abroad. In 1761 Foerster passed on his business,which he had expanded considerably, to his son.42A significant event in the history ofmusic during Anna Ioannovna’s reign was the publication in 1739 of a scholarly treatise onmusic by the academician Leonhard Euler, Tentamen novae theoriae musicae [An attemptat a new theory of music]. The Russian Academy of Sciences played no small role in theformation of our musical life in that distant period. The Academy of Sciences owned the

sole printing press in St. Petersburg, and it was there that the first libretti for intermediand operas were printed. Later on, when the press acquired a music type, they printedbooks on music and even printed musical scores. The Academy of Science’s bookstore inSt. Petersburg and its Moscow branch were the first to sell music and to accept orders formusic from abroad.The activities of some of the Academy’s members, however, were farmore important. Here operatic libretti were translated and inscriptions were devised forthe illuminations of the period, and here were composed the laudatory odes and verseswhich were set to music as triumphal kanty and the first Russian romansy (Russian songs).Finally, here the first scholarly treatise on music in Russia appeared—albeit in Latin—andthe first historical materials concerning the music of our distant past.In discussingmembers of the Russian Academy, we should first mention Vasilii Kirillovich Trediakovskii(b. 22 February 1703 in Astrakhan, d. 6 August 1768 in St. Petersburg). To this day manyview him simply as a talentless poet, but he was, in fact, a gifted, witty, and cultured man.His significance is not limited to the translation of Araja’s first opera (La forza dell’amore edell’odio), or to the coronation kant for Anna Ioannovna, mentioned earlier, for which heprobably also wrote the music, or even to the translation and publication of intermedi. In1733 his edition Chetyre arlekina [Four harlequins] appeared, presumably translations oflibretti for works staged at the court theater in Petersburg. Trediakovskii created a newmeter in Russian versification by departing from the Polish meter cultivated by SimeonPolotskii, which had captivated Russian society in the late seventeenth and earlyeighteenth centuries. As Trediakovskii wrote in his own epitaph:Stikh nauchivshii vnov’stopoi prezhde vsekh v RossiiMertv uzhe esm’ i pogreben v zemny nedra sii,Ia bylTret’iakovskii trudoliubivyi filolog,Kak to uveriaet’s meroi i bez mery slog.Having been thefirst in Russia to learn a new meterI now lie here buried in the bowels of the earth,I wasTret’iakovskii, an assiduous philologist,As the syllable, with or without measure, willconfirm.While living in Paris, Trediakovskii assimilated the more elegant versificationpatterns of the French poets which, truthfully, were quite difficult to apply to Russian. Andyet, through the imagery and the variety in meter, and also through the subject matter, hispoetry was far removed from Polotskii’s crude verses, which never left the sphere of a“spiritually edifying character.” The syllabic verse by Polotskii’s contemporaries andfollowers amazes by its utter poverty of content and lack of inventiveness; it is amonotone of Polish-based syllabic verse strung together without any kind of logicaldevelopment. In one of his articles, in which he discusses the versification borrowed byseventeenth-century Russian writers from the Poles, Trediakovskii declares that, on hisreturn to his native land in 1730, he began “to produce verses in the French spirit.” In hispoetry he introduced an amorous element which, although previously unknown toRussian society, was immediately accepted by our kant singers and their successors, thesingers of solo romansy.43The academician Jacob Stählin-Starcksburg (b. 1712 inMemmingen, d. 1785 in St. Petersburg [see fig. 104]) occupied a different position. HisGerman origins guaranteed that he would not be treated as a lackey by his lordlysuperiors. Invited to Russia in 1735, Stählin was at first entrusted with the preparation and

printing of the “retellings” of the Italian comedies and intermedi which were distributed tothe court before performances. As a professor of eloquence (rhetoric) and allegory,Stählin wrote odes, allegories, and inscriptions for illuminations, medals, and the like; healso edited the Spb. vedomosti and published books and atlases, and he was closelyassociated with several theatrical productions. In 1742 he was entrusted with the stagingof Hasse’s La clemenza di Tito and the composition of a prologue celebrating ElizabethPetrovna’s coronation. His activities are best set forth in a petition he submitted toEmpress Elizabeth in August 1743, in which he wrote:Under the main direction of HisSerene Highness (the Prince of Hesse and Hamburg), I, the most humble, haveaccomplished the following:1. The opera about Tito for use by our orchestra;2. The specialPrologue, at the time of Your accession to the Throne, which starts with pain and thenends with the rejoicing of Russia;3. Designing and supplying drawings for costumes andscenery . . . attending twice daily to supervise the workers . . .;4. Spending whole nights incorrecting the French and Italian printed libretti;5. Training boys in the ways of thetheater;6. When there were the opera rehearsals and the Prologue was staged, I playedthe transverse flute to lute accompaniment; and also it was I who7. Not only prepared theplan for the great fireworks in Moscow and for the various illuminations . . . but accordingto orders from the Highest level . . . I kept an accurate court journal.44FIG. 104.Academician Jakob von Stählin (1712–1785) [engraved from a contemporaryportrait].Stählin’s literary activity was also partly devoted to music. Besides the previouslymentioned article, “On the beginning, growth, and present state of opera in all ofEurope” (1738), in 1769–70 he printed in the journal M. Johann Joseph Haigolds Beylagenzum neuveränderten Russland articles on theatrical and ballet performances in Russia.Excerpts from these articles also appeared in Russian translation in 1779 in the Spb.vestnik [St. Petersburg herald].45 In spite of inaccuracies, until recently these articlesprovided our primary information on the early history of music in Russia. In his capacity aseditor of the Spb. vedomosti, Stählin apparently was the first chronicler of musical life inPetersburg, printing brief reports about events at court.The celebrated mathematicianProfessor Leonhard Euler (b. 15 September 1707 in Basel, d. 6 September 1783 in St.Petersburg [see fig. 105]) took no part whatsoever in musical matters; although he was agreat lover of the theater, his interest in music was only from a scientific viewpoint. Hedevoted several articles to the investigation of the duration of sound and the relation ofthe vibrations of strings, bells, kettledrums, the air, and so on. The academy published histreatise, Tentamen novae theoriae musicae ex certissimis harmoniae principiis dilucideexpositae, in 1739, and it attracted the attention of the learned world, although the resultsof his investigations had no practical value. According to Hugo Riemann, Euler was thefirst to introduce logarithms for greater clarity in presenting the differences betweenpitches. In his well-known Lettres à une princesse d’Allemagne (Berlin, 1768–72), he alsotouches frequently upon musical harmony and the relationship between sounds andcolors. The latter point was also the subject of an interesting scientific study, Coniecturaphysica circa propagationem soni ac luminis, which Euler published when he was a

professor at the Berlin Academy. Euler’s hypothesis, little appreciated at the time andsoon forgotten, about the colors of sounds, came to be accepted in modern times as amatter of practical significance. Exceptionally industrious and supremely acute in hisscientific conclusions, Euler tried to stimulate interest in the science of music among hiscontemporaries.46 The competition for the prize of a 100-ducat gold medal, which heannounced in 1777 at the academy, for a work to be submitted on the topic, “The Theoryof Sound in Music Based on the Rules of Harmony,” produced no practical results, since atthe time there was a total absence of learned musicians among us.47 There were,however, a few learned men at the academy itself who, following Euler’s example,occasionally devoted some of their time to the science of music. Thus, at a meeting of theacademy on 29 April 1742, physics professor Wolfgang Krafft read a report on the subject,“If they are arranged in a certain way, can colors create the same pleasure in the eyes of adeaf person as we experience with our ears from the proportional harmony of musicaltones?” This was being considered on hearing about a recent French invention of“clavichords pleasing to the eyes” (Spb. vedomosti 1742, no. 33). Apparently that reportwas printed by the Academy of Sciences in 1744.48FIG. 105. Academician Leonhard Euler(1707–1783), author of Tentamen novae theoriae musicae (St. Petersburg, 1739).With thissurvey of the musical activities of the members of the Russian Academy of Sciences, wemay conclude our sketch of musical developments in Russia during Anna Ioannovna’sreign. This epoch, extremely harsh and cruel as far as internal politics were concerned,marks in musical life the beginnings of serious artistic elements, especially in the practice,creativity, and science of music. The decade 1730–40 marks the establishment of courtconcerts and of operatic performances on a European model and, associated with this,the recruiting of well-known artists and a concert orchestra, and the appearance ofscientific treatises and instrument makers. The models established in our country in thatdecade formed the basis for the development of later musical life in Russia.AnnaIoannovna died on 26 November 1740. The 375 days of Anna Leopol’dovna’s regency forher young and unlucky son, Tsar Ivan Antonovich, passed without a trace of interest inmusic. First the mourning for the late empress and then the political catastrophes andintrigues at court (the overthrow of Biron and so forth) diverted society’s attention frommusic and the theater. The only information we have from this period concerns theswearing of allegiance to Tsar Ivan VI by Francesco Araja and the foreign musicians; a fewconcerts by the court orchestra and the Moldavian musicians mentioned earlier; therevival of masquerades; and data cited above regarding the court singers. Only one newfact may be noted: musical entertainment during card playing. After Count Linar’sbetrothal to Baroness Julia Mengden, “their Imperial Highnesses sat down to play cardsand listened to an Italian concert” (Spb. vedomosti 18 August 1741, no. 66). This fact,unimportant in itself, is interesting only because thereafter, especially during Catherine II’sreign, concerts during card games became a regular custom at court.48A14. Music inCourt Life during the Reigns of Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine IICourt festivals andmasquerades. Composition of the court orchestra. Official festivals in the capitals and the

provinces. Orchestras and theaters of aristocrats and patrons.The period of AnnaIoannovna’s decade-long reign provided glimpses of the paths along which the capital’smusical life might develop. The second half of the eighteenth century presented newproblems in this respect: music and theater gradually ceased to serve solely asentertainment for court circles and became part of public life in general. Thiscircumstance, in turn, led to the establishment of a Russian public theater and to theemergence of native talents in the realm of theater and music. This historical path in thedevelopment of Russia’s musical life also requires changes in our scholarly approach.Musical life gradually relinquishes its links to the caprices of the court and begins todevelop independently; previously linked closely to the tsars’ personal tastes, musical lifenow becomes separate, conditioned by social trends.Elizabeth Petrovna ascended thethrone under peculiar circumstances which left their mark on the character of her reigneven in the realms of music and theater. She started with a definite program: theprotection of Russia from foreign newcomers and the restoration of the rights of nativeRussians.49 One of the new ruler’s closest intimates, A. G. Razumovskii, whom Elizabethraised to the rank of a count, was a simple Cossack from Little Russia who had been oneof her court singers. It is also interesting to note that Elizabeth’s confidant K. I. Schwarz (d.1756), who had helped place her on the throne, had once been her music teacher.Apparently another court singer, Iakov Shubskii, was also closely associated with thisaffair, and Elizabeth rewarded him later with a hereditary nobility. Other well-knownnames under “Elisavet Petrovna” (this is what she called herself on official documents), inaddition to Rozum-Razumovskii and Shubinskii, were the choir master of her chapel, IvanPetrov (b. 1681); the court singer and composer Iakim Mironovich (d. 1745); the courtsinger Fyodor Boskov (ca. 1743); the singer and later choir master and director of thechapel, Mark Poltaratskii [Poltoratskii] (1729–1795), who received the rank of a colonel; thesinger Evstafii Sechkaryov, who trained the cadets of the Shliakhetnyi Corps in theatricalskills; and others. Also attached to the court were the bandura players Nizhevich andMatvei Fyodorovich (d. 1761), and the lute [and bandura] player Timofei Belogradskii(under Elizabeth, his salary was raised to 1,000 rubles), as well as othermusicians.49AThese names alone indicate the new directions Russia’s musical life beganto take with Elizabeth Petrovna’s ascent to the throne. This is further confirmed by thedevelopment of new kanty. With the exception of Trediakovskii’s coronation kant,mentioned in chapter 13, no eighteenth-century manuscript musical collection containsany work connected with Anna Ioannovna. Now, however, the picture changes, and atElizabeth’s accession to the throne and during the first period of her reign, a series offestive songs was composed. One of them reads:Zlatyia veki nyne nastupili,Zlatuiu radost’vsemirno iavili,Vkhodom divnyia Elisavet sushchiVo slave tsvetushchi.Golden ages havenow dawnedGolden joy displayed to the worldBy the arrival of the wondrousElizabethBlossoming in her glory.This is how Elizabeth is praised in one of the kanty foundin the collection from the Public Library ([RNB] Q.XIV.141), already cited.50 Another kant inthe same collection, shown in musical example 14.1, was one of the first to use the

rhythm of the polonaise and fully reflects the spirit of the time. There are many such kantyin manuscript sources, demonstrating their popularity and their performance at variousfestive occasions when “Italian music” was either lacking or deemedinappropriate.51EXAMPLE 14.1. “Vivat preslavna, samoderzhavna” [Vivat to the mostglorious autocrat]1. Vivat preslavna, samoderzhavnaBlagostei dver’ Elisaveta,na mnogaletaPetrova dshcher’,Petrova dshcher’.2. Vivat vozshedsha,Chrez boga vedsha,Na Rosskiitron.Nichto bezbednoIbo naslednaEia byl on (repeated)and the final, seventh stanza:7.Vivat kotoruMy v siiu poruDolzhny poem—Zdravstvui devitsaImperatritsa,Dlia vsekh prisem (!) (repeated)1. Vivat to the most glorious autocratGate of Benevolence Elizabeth,Livelong for many yearsDaughter of Peter (repeated)2. Vivat to you who ascendedBy the handof GodTo the Russian throne;In no way unworthyFor she herself was heir (repeated)7.Vivat to whom we nowDutifully singLong live the Maiden EmpressFor all, forever(repeated).Equally noteworthy is that the Russian secular art song emerged duringElizabeth’s reign; from this, the Russian romans, originally called “Russiansong” [rossiiskaia pesn’], later emerged. Derzhavin had good reason to call this period theAge of Song. Toward the end of Elizabeth’s reign, the first printed collection of Russiansongs appeared, assembled by G. P. Teplov, the father of the secular romans. Elizabethherself, however, has been viewed as the author—or more correctly, the singer—of awhole series of songs which seem to have become part of everyday practice. Elizabethloved folk songs and while still a princess took part in round dances [khorovody] in theenvirons of Moscow. According to some scholars, one of the songs she sang, “Vo sele, selePokrovskom” [In the village, the village of Pokrovskoe], a song which became quite popularduring Catherine’s reign, has autobiographical significance. The subject of the song isElizabeth’s avoidance of the courtship of Ludwig, Prince of Brunswick, which Regent AnnaLeopol’dovna fostered in order to eliminate Elizabeth from the throne.51AOther songs arealso ascribed to Elizabeth, songs which closely resemble the character of the futureRussian romance (for example, the song “Na razluku’s milym” [On parting from mybeloved]) or reflect the mood of the mournful kanty then in vogue. T. A. Martem’ianovstates that on the eve of her ascent to the throne and the overthrow of the Brunswickfamily, a step which might have ended tragically for the claimant with “Peter’s blood” inher veins, Elizabeth, standing on the threshold as it were, could not refrain from singing asong highly suitable to the occasion:52Okh, zhit’e moe,zhit’e bednoe . . .Izzhila iamladost’za bednu zhalost’,vek zhivuchiBedy terpiuchi.Ah, my life,My life somiserable . . .My youth, lostIn miserable sorrowLiving out the yearsSufferingmisfortunes.The text of this poem was published by academician V. N. Peretts.52A Thesong cited earlier (“Vo sele Pokrovskom”) was included in Ivan Prach’s song collection of1790, and it was used at the same time in the opera Fedul’s det’mi [Fedul and his children].This work apparently contributed to the song’s popularity, at least within the capital,because the opera was one of Catherine II’s favorites. Elizabeth was not the only one tocreate songs. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the actress Praskov’ia Ivanovna,who was one of Count N. P. Sheremetev’s serfs and later married her master, sang

another popular song, “Vecher pozdno iz lesochka” [Late in the evening, from a littlewood]. This song also had autobiographical connections.52BThere was little change in thecharacter of the court music of Elizabeth’s time. Italian vocal and instrumental music wasobligatory at dinners, suppers, masquerades, and festivities, and not only for thecelebration of the empress’s birthday or name day, or anniversaries of her accession tothe throne and coronation, but even at celebrations by various fraternal orders. Thisincluded some that were quite foreign to Russians, for example, the Day of the PrussianOrder of the Black Eagle, celebrated in 1747. To add to their splendor, some of thesecelebrations were accompanied by performances of new operas, and others by the Frenchplays which had begun to be fashionable. Court celebrations became more magnificentand ornate, and required more musical participation, and, as we shall see below, the courtorchestra was consequently considerably enlarged. Thus Coronation Day in 1748 wasmarked by the usual Tafelmusik performed by Italians, an Italian pastorale, a masked ball,and, finally, a French play. By that time the French theater in Petersburg had become apermanent institution.Contemporary engravings have preserved views of the courtorchestra performing during masquerades and other festivities. The band occupiedspecial balconies or adjoining galleries while playing Tafelmusik, music for dancing, and soforth, following their earlier practice. An illustration by Ivan Sokolov (d. 1756) shows aluxurious masked ball in a brilliantly lit hall; in opposite corners at the far end of the hallare balconies, one occupied by the orchestra, the other by three singers [see fig. 106].53Another engraving, by an unknown artist, represents a private masquerade at court inElizabeth’s time with a fairly large orchestra in an upper gallery.54 Evidently the courtorchestra played during banquets in similar circumstances. In 1749 the Spb. vedomostirecords the appearance of two orchestras and a whole chorus of singers during a courtdinner. From that time on, apparently, not only were the Italian vocalists called upon tosing but also the court singers, who performed in Italian. These singers are alsomentioned at the 1751 New Year’s festival when, during the evening meal, “Italianinstrumental and vocal music was performed on a balcony in the hall and Her ImperialMajesty’s singers sang in chorus” (Spb. vedomosti 1751, no. 2). The same report recordsthe brilliant setting of this New Year’s festival: “In that hall some 3,000 candles of whitewax were lit in large crystal chandeliers, candle holders, pyramids . . . and the flower bedswere illuminated by a vast number of small lamps of white wax or little crystal votives.”One can appreciate the difficulty of the musicians’ work on such occasions from the factthat the evening meal could last no less than seven hours! This shows us, on the onehand, what a wearisome task this was for the singers and players, and, on the other, howlarge their repertory had to be in order to entertain the court “gastronomes” for hours onend over the course of nearly three days.FIG. 106. Masquerade at the old Winter Palaceduring Elizabeth’s time, from an engraving by I. Sokolov (ca. 1756).The same procedurewas observed at court functions under Catherine II.55 They now began to be arrangedmore regularly, and at receptions agreeable music had to be provided for those playinglomber [a card game] and berlin [also, apparently, a card game]. Concerts during card

playing, introduced by Anna Leopol’dovna, became customary under Catherine; eventriumphal cantatas written for some special occasion were performed during card games.Soon after his arrival in St. Petersburg in September 1765, Baldassare Galuppi, in hiscapacity as court conductor, wrote a cantata for the empress’s name day which had itspremiere at mealtime on 24 November and was repeated on the next day at thereception. At this performance, according to Poroshin, “the music (of the cantata) wasextremely good, grandiose, and agreeable; if you listen to it carefully, your heart isenraptured. Her Majesty was thoroughly satisfied and deigned to order it played threetimes da capo. Meanwhile, she was pleased to play lomber with Count ZakhariiGrigor’evich Chernyshev and General Prince Aleksandr Mikhailovich Golitsyn.”56Cantataswere usually composed for the various occasions enlivening courtly life, and they soonreplaced the earlier kanty which had acclaimed Peter’s victories during his reign. If, underElizabeth, “Italian music with concerti and cantatas were played constantly” during afestive banquet (Spb. vedomosti 1745, no. 33), then Catherine Alekseevna, who accordingto many of her contemporaries was generally rather indifferent to music, viewed musicalperformances at court not only as brilliant but also as intelligent entertainment.57 Arajalived and worked in Petersburg during nearly the entire reigns of two rulers (AnnaIoannovna and Elizabeth); as for Catherine, she changed her court maestri more often.Araja had not distinguished himself as a composer in his native Italy before serving inRussia. Catherine, however, began to invite musicians who were celebrities or hadattained unquestionable successes in Europe, such as Galuppi, Sarti, Martín, and Paisiello—a series of outstanding composers who had made their mark on the development ofItalian opera. Their participation in the court’s musical life was felt in every way. In additionto their operatic activities, these maestri worked frequently for the semi-official, moreintimate side of court life.In addition to Galuppi’s cantata, mentioned above, we know ofother, similar works he composed, as well as a series of cantatas by other composers inRussian service: by Rutini (two cantatas for soprano and string trio (one of these is dated22 August 1758);57A Manfredini (apparently the composer of a cantata titled “Le rivali,”written for the anniversary of the accession to the throne celebrated in 1765); GasparoAngiolini (Eitner mentions several vocal works); Tommaso Traetta (the cantata “Qualmisoprendo,” and the court library in Vienna has forty-two of his aria-cantatas withorchestra); Giuseppe Sarti (the cantata “Brachnaia pesn’” [Nuptial song] and the chorus“Tsaritsa severa mat’” [The empress, mother of the North] of 1793, a chorus for the birthof Nikolai Pavlovich in 1796, and other works); Domenico Cimarosa (the cantata “Ateneedificata” of 1788, composed in honor of Alexander Pavlovich’s birth); and so forth. Thereare also collections of divertissements by Giovanni Paisiello that were performed at courtand which give us an opportunity to judge what kind of chamber music was played there[see the discussion in chapter 18].The court orchestra was, of course, the primary sourceof musical entertainments at court, where there was a steady stream of receptions, balls,masquerades, concerts, and theatrical shows. It was organized formally in AnnaIoannovna’s time. Although Anna reduced the size of the “Italian music” toward the end of

her rule, the ensemble grew again under Elizabeth. There is a curious edict issued on 5May 1758, addressed to the Theater Directorate:Her Imperial Majesty has been notifiedthat the musicians of the court of Her Imperial Majesty, on occasions when they have tobe at the court and in the operatic theater for theatrical shows, have to go on foot andcarry musical instruments, small and large. She deigned to accept this as inappropriate,and, in addition, that at late hours after the end of musical performances and theatricalshows, they have to walk to their quarters with these instruments, which is difficult, andcarrying large instruments becomes especially impossible because of their weight.Because of this, Her Imperial Majesty was pleased to order that for all those courtmusicians, when they are on their way to the court of Her Imperial Majesty or whendeparting to the opera house for theatrical shows in order to perform music with theirmusical instruments and for their return trip to their quarters, and in special cases inEkaterinhof and other places where musicians are needed, that carriages with horses shallbe provided from the Imperial stables. (ADIT sect. 2: 55)Compared to the last civil listsfrom Anna’s reign (8,250 rubles in 1740), when only a limited number of aged musiciansremained in her service, the lists from Elizabeth’s reign (1757) and from Catherine’s (1791)show a progressive increase in the composition of the court orchestra, whose ranks werenow filled with solid musicians. These documents, so intrinsic to the history ofinstrumental music in Russia, have preserved the names of most of the musicians servingat court in the second half of the eighteenth century.The lists for 1757 allot as salaries tothe “Italian company” the sum of 34,409 rubles 99½ kopecks. The company included aconductor, the orchestra, a set designer, and a ballet troupe (including Russian dancers).The detailed listing of artists is found in the “Note about Salaries for Employees of theItalian Company” (1757) with the enclosed register, which reads: “Who is currently presentin person in the Italian company and how much they receive per year insalary”:58Kapellmeister Araja2,000 r.Singer Saletti3,500 r.Buffo Compassi1,500 r.Buffa[bufonka] Garani1,500 r.Singer Sharlotta Shlakovskaia (served from 7 April 1756)600r.Harpsichordist Raupach (from 13 February 1755)400 r.Concertmaster Madonius ([LuigiMadonis]; from 22 July 1755; to his previous salary of 1,500 r. was added the “remaining”pay for his wife, 600 r.)2,150 r.Violinist [Domenico] Dall’Oglio1,100 r.Violinist Porta500r.Violinist Angelo Vaccari600 r.Violinist Shnurpfel’500 r.Cellist [Giuseppe] Dall’Oglio1,100r.Cellist Gasparo Toneschi [Janeschi]900 r.Oboist Stadzhi [probably Staggi]1,000 r.Hornplayer Ferdinand Kölbel500 r.Horn player Leon. Smidel’ (contracts [for Kölbel and Smidel’]concluded in Vienna by Baron Sivers on 1 July 1756 [this is probably Leopold Smiedel orSchmiedl])500 r.Horn player Iagan Maresh [Jan Mareš]400 r.Horn player Khrist. Firch[probably Christian Fritsch]400 r.Trumpeter Ant. Tits [probably related to F. Titz]266 r., 66½k.Trumpeter Sebast. Gein [probably Hein]266 r., 66½ k.Trumpeter Ios. Ganauer [probablyHanauer]266 r., 66½ k.To this list should be added other musicians who finished theirservice at about the time the 1757 civil list was certified, as well as those who wereengaged after that date. Some of the former are included in a supplement to the registeras having departed from the Italian company for various reasons; the latter are

mentioned in other sources. The list contains the following musicians:58AThe courttrumpeter Gotfrid Boritsii ([Boritsius] served from 1731, d. 1750 in St. Petersburg);chamber musician Johann-Baptiste Gumpenhuber (served also in S. K. Naryshkin’s band;departed from St. Petersburg in 1755); chamber musician Ignazio Dol and cellist Ibersher([probably Uberscheer] both departed in 1762); violinist Giuseppe Caselli from Bologna,soloist and teacher of Grand Duke Peter Fyodorovich (ca. 1760); the violinists “oldMadonius” (i.e., Antonio Madonis, d. 31 March 1746), Giuseppe Passerini (granted leave in1750), Pietro Peri (or Pieri, served from 1736 to 1748; later assigned to the Crown Princeand the future emperor Peter III, and in 1762 became concertmaster of the Italiancompany); and the bassoon players Friedrich (d. 17 June 1757) and Pikel’ (d. 24 April1746).The civil list of 1791 gives the distribution of the artists into separate groups, and,taken as a whole, these groups show how much the court theaters’ activities grew duringCatherine II’s reign. The “List of Names of Employees in the Service of the TheaterDirectorate” (published in ADIT, 2:376–97) contains the names of the members of theItalian troupe; the chamber musicians of the two court orchestras; the corps de ballet ofthe French and Russian theatrical troupes; [the category] “managers, servants, and otherspecialists,” such as the higher-paid scenic artists; and, finally, the officials, employees, andretirees of the directorate. The complete list contains 476 names, and the total salariesamounted to 234,152 rubles 16¼ kopecks.We are interested in the membership of theItalian troupe and the orchestra because they were the most closely associated with courtconcerts. The membership of the first list is interesting. Because performances of Italianopera were discontinued at about that time, it was possible to reduce the number ofsingers to a minimum. Only three are mentioned in the 1790 civil list: Guglielmo Jermolliand his wife, Maria-Anna (they served under contract from 1760, receiving a joint sum of3,800 rubles), and the singer Marianna Gattoni (she served without a contract in 1790 andreceived 1,300 rubles). The list also includes “school Kapellmeister” Martín (he servedunder contract from 1 October 1790, receiving 3,500 rubles); harpsichordist and laterKapellmeister Antonio Amati (without contract in 1763, received 1,000 rubles); and theNeapolitan poet Ferdinando Moretti (d. 1807; received 1,500 rubles according to the 1790contract).59 This was the necessary personnel for chamber concerts and cantatas atcourt.60The court orchestra, from which a dance ensemble had been detached earlier,was now divided into two apparently independent organizations: chamber musicians[kamermuzykanty] of the first orchestra, and the second orchestra for dances. The twodiffered considerably in their official positions as well as in their financial security.Whereas members of the first orchestra were designated “chamber musicians,” those inthe second orchestra were not; the minimal salaries of the members of the first orchestrawere the maximal salaries of those of the second orchestra (350–500 rubles). Only theleader of the second orchestra, Vasilii Pashkevich, received 600 rubles, in spite of hisnearly thirty years of service, while the concertmaster Carlo Canobbio and the firstviolinists of the first orchestra received 2,600, 1,500, and 1,200 rubles, respectively, andalso had lodgings at public expense.According to the civil list of 1791, the first orchestra

consisted of forty-seven chamber musicians, including the harpsichordist Amati; theconcertmaster was Canobbio and the ensemble included:21 violinists5 violists4 cellists3double bassists2 oboists2 flautists3 clarinetists[2 bassoonists; see n. 61]4 horn players1harpist1 harpsichordistTotal of 47 [48] musicians61The second orchestra, for dance music,had forty-three musicians; Vasilii Pashkevich was the concertmaster and the playersincluded:16 violinists3 violists2 cellists2 double bassists2 oboists4 flautists3 clarinetists3bassoonists4 trumpeters [only three listed in n. 62 below, with the addition of a timpanist][4 horn players]Total of 39 musicians62 [not including the horn players listed in thenote]We thus see how large the orchestras were in Catherine’s reign. This wasundoubtedly necessitated by the fact that the first orchestra had to play not only at themusical programs at receptions and other court ceremonies but also had to appear as thetheater orchestra at court performances and probably at some shows in the city as well.By now performances were often staged at court, and, as we know, the TheaterDirectorate was entrusted with managing several different foreign troupes. The theatricalorchestras of the time were not large, of course, even in operas; two flutes, two oboes,two bassoons, two horns, and a string trio without cello was the usual instrumentation ofmany operas performed in the capital. The court orchestra was therefore sufficient tosupply the music for several stage enterprises.In addition to Araja and Martín, mentionedin the civil lists of 1757 and 1791, the activities of several conductors in Russia have not yetbeen fully clarified.Araja, who left St. Petersburg in 1759, was succeeded by HermannRaupach (b. 1728, d. ca. 1779), who joined the orchestra in 1755 as a harpsichordist with asalary of 400 rubles, according to the civil list of 1757 [see fig. 107]. The length of hisservice has not been established by other official documents, but apparently he was inservice until 1762, when Baldassare Galuppi took charge of the court orchestra. Raupachwas then appointed director “for training students and for the composition of vocal andinstrumental music” at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and he served there until 1779,the year he probably died. It is known that his successor in that position was [Anton]Sartori, but in the 1770s Raupach returned to service as the second conductor (Spb.vedomosti 1774, no. 1) when his opera Al’tsesta [Alceste] was revived. In addition tochamber music, Raupach, while in Russia, composed a few theatrical works, of whichAl’tsesta (1758) was the best known. He wrote music for the ballet Pribezhishchedobrodeteli [The refuge of virtue] in 1759; choruses and music for the prologue “Novyelavry” [New laurels] in 1759; the Italian opera Siroe, re di Persia (1760); the ballets Armideet Renaud (1773) and Le désespoir d’Armide (1774); four ballets for Traetta’s opera LucioVero (1774 at the Hermitage Theater); and the Russian opera Dobrye soldaty [The goodsoldiers], staged apparently shortly before his death. The latter was quite popular, andone of its choruses became part of the repertory of secular (later, school) kanty. We shallexamine Raupach’s Dobrye soldaty in our survey of Russian operas of the eighteenthcentury [in chapter 18].Vincenzo Manfredini served at the same time as Raupach (1755–68), and afterward the succession of court conductors and composers includedBaldassare Galuppi (1762–68), Tommaso Traetta (1768–76), Giovanni Paisiello (1776–84),

Giuseppe Sarti (1784–88, and again in 1794–1800), Domenico Cimarosa (1789–91), andVincente Martín (1790–94). The last to appear was Catterino Al’bertovich Cavos, whoentered Russian service in 1799 and conducted the orchestra of the state theatersthroughout the first half of the nineteenth century. All the artists listed here wereconsidered to be the main artistic directors of the court orchestra and of operaticperformances managed by the Theater Directorate. At the same time many othermusicians were in court service as directors and composers. Some of their names remainunknown to this day, as they were not included in the civil lists. In the list for 1791 we findthat Carlo Canobbio is listed as concertmaster of the first orchestra, and Vasilii Pashkevichas concertmaster of the second or dance orchestra. There is little doubt that they,according to the custom of the time, also conducted the ensemble. Canobbio (b. in Italy in1741, d. 23 February 1822 in St. Petersburg) served in the orchestra from 1779 to 1800,and is also known to have composed operas, two symphonies, and vocal and chambermusic. Vasilii Pashkevich (ca. 1742–1800) was also the author of several operas andromansy. He began his service as a violinist in 1763, and in 1789 was appointedKapellmeister of the dance orchestra.63FIG. 107. Hermann Raupach (1728–1779), courtKapellmeister.To the general list of court musicians and conductors, the following namesmay be added: violinist Tito Porta, chamber musician, who entered the court orchestra in1743 and served for forty years (he retired in 1783 with 600 rubles per annum; the civil listshows that from 1762 he was paid 1,000 rubles, and in 1783, 1,200 rubles). He was arenowned teacher in St. Petersburg whose pupils included the violinist Khandoshkin. Wecontinue with Koz’ma Radionovich Sokolov (b. 1723, d. 3 July 1773), a composer andmusician in the service of the court theater;64 Franz Tuma, a composer and Kapellmeisterduring Elizabeth’s reign (b. in Kostelec in 1701, d. 1774 in Vienna) who entered service in1741;64A the Swedish conductor Ferdinand Zellbell, who apparently appeared at courtaround 1759, when he left St. Petersburg; the Venetian Francesco Zoppis, composer andconductor of the Russian theater in 1756–65 who left St. Petersburg in 1781; finally, one ofthe conductors in Petersburg in the 1740s was a certain Sharshmidt [Scharschmidt] (d.1750), whose son was a well-known architect in Elizabeth’s time.65 We shall encountersome of these musicians, composers, and conductors later in our examination of thehistory of music in Russia in the second half of the eighteenth century.A certain varietywas introduced into court life by the empress’s travels, as well as by the various musicaland theatrical entertainments staged in court circles not by hired or serf musicians but bydistinguished amateurs. Data about the rulers’ travels and official celebrations provideinsights into musical activities in the provinces. The theaters of the nobility, in turn,indicate that musical and theatrical diversions had become fashionable in high society, amode that gradually paved the way for patronage.We have some curious reports aboutCatherine’s travels to Estonia and Lithuania in 1764 and to Iaroslavl in 1767. The DailyRecord of the empress’s travel in 1764 reports a festive reception in Narva on 22 Junewhere, after the welcoming words of the bishop, “the singers performed a congratulatorykontsert.”66 One of the many kanty composed for Catherine may have been suitable for

this occasion. At Reval [Tallinn] on 29 June, during a banquet in the Hall of Knights, “musicwas played in front of the hall during the meal,” and in the evening there was a ball. Themost resplendent reception for Catherine was given in Riga. There, on the evening of 9July, “the whole city was brilliantly illuminated, and on the square in front of Town Hall, thefountains flowed with wine for the rejoicing people who, nearly all night long, filled the airwith incessant acclamations of ‘vivat’ to the sound of trumpets and kettledrums.” On 12July at 4 o’clock, “Her Majesty was pleased to go to the Stock Exchange to listen to aconcert of instrumental and vocal music, performed by distinguished citizens of bothsexes, at which two beautiful girls, daughters of Riga merchants, sang an Italian duet mostcharmingly.”When Catherine visited Iaroslavl in the summer of 1767, there was a festivewelcoming ceremony in the Cathedral on 9 May, where, according to the report in the Spb.vedomosti for 1767 (no. 7), “seminarians and singers, standing on both sides, clothed inwhite habits and with olive branches in their hands, sang verses especially written for HerMajesty’s arrival,” a scene reminiscent of the church performances [deistva] from the daysof [the seventeenth-century tsar] Aleksei Mikhailovich.These fragmentary data show thatmusikiia had begun to reach the remote provinces. This is confirmed by other reportsabout the role of music in various official ceremonies in other towns and cities. Even inBaturin, where Count Kirill Grigor’evich Razumovskii lived in 1763, Coronation Day wascelebrated “with customary music and the singing of Italian choruses,” and there was“Turkish music” between the courses at dinner (Spb. vedomosti 1763, no. 82). Theempress’s birthday in 1765 was celebrated in Kazan with a performance of a specialprologue, which ended with a festive hymn “expressing joy and ardent zeal toward HerImperial Majesty.” Apparently the staging of festive prologues was a regular event inKazan. There was a performance of a prologue by some teachers there in 1771, again forthe empress’s birthday; in the chronicle of events in the Mosk. vedomosti we read: “Assoon as the curtain rose, the singers of His Grace the Archbishop [of Kazan], standing onboth sides of the orchestra, began to sing a Russian kant suitable for this festal day, inharmony with the orchestra” (1771, no. 37). Here we evidently have a cantata withorchestral accompaniment. The Mosk. vedomosti (no. 43) gives a very interestingdescription of the theatrical celebration of the empress’s birthday in Kazan in 1773. In thecity of Smolensk, on Coronation Day 1767, there was vocal music during the dinner givenby Bishop Parfenii (Spb. vedomosti, no. 84). In Astrakhan, music was performed on officialdays, following the example of other provincial cities, and once, in 1778, the governor evenentertained distinguished foreign guests with foreign music (Spb. vedomosti, no. 55). AtSevsk, in 1784, the local seminary celebrated Catherine’s birthday with a festiveperformance in which, between the spoken texts, the students sang the couplets of a kantespecially written for the occasion, including lines such as:Likuite dnes’ MinervychadaSredi mladykh Muz Sevskikh sada.Rejoice today Minerva’s childrenAmid the gardenof the young Muses of Sevsk.At the conclusion they performed a church hymn,“Luchezarnyia tvoia molniia” [How splendorous is Thy radiance].These brief survivingreports show that the musical and theatrical entertainments established for official days

copied as far as possible similar court divertissements: kanty (a cappella); cantatas (withorchestra); music during the meals; prologues and stage shows; and illuminations andfireworks. These reports also prove that music and musicians were gradually spreading ineven the remotest parts of the empire. We shall encounter other musical events in theprovinces when surveying the musical and theatrical practices of contemporary publiclife.In the capitals, festivities of this sort, apart from those tied to the court, were stagedon a far more splendid and varied scale. They were organized by wealthy nobility in honorof the empress. Often they staged the so-called noble shows [blagorodnye spektakli].Similar entertainments were sometimes organized by pedagogical, educational, orcharitable institutions. Moscow University often held special gatherings on 30 June, theday of Catherine’s ascent to the throne. Here is how the Mosk. vedomosti described onesuch event in 1773:When the numerous company had assembled, they all proceeded inregular order to the great auditorium of the university, where . . . the concert began withsinging from the balcony the first part of a cantata composed for the occasion; this wasfollowed by speeches . . . Finally, the audience was delighted by the rendering of thefollowing verse of the cantata which brought the proceedings to a close:Torzhestvuitemuzy nyne,Zdes’ sobravshis’ na Parnas,Poite pesn’ Ekaterine,Proslavliaite den’ v seichas.Now celebrate, Muses,Assembled here on ParnassusSing a song to CatherineNowglorify this day.The author of these verses (of which the first stanza is cited here) was A.Perepechin. The composer’s name is unknown but apparently was one of the musicteachers at Moscow University. In the registers of students, published annually in theMosk. vedomosti, these pupils are often mentioned as receiving prizes, usually books,after their music exams.The next year the university gave another annual festive concerton 30 June: “as soon as they had taken their places, the concert began and from thebalcony they sang the first part of a cantata composed especially for the occasion.” Afterthe distribution of prizes and speeches, “the music began and they sang the second partof the cantata.” Then there were more speeches, and at their conclusion the third part ofthe cantata was performed: “the music delighted the entire gathering, at which thefestivities concluded” (Mosk. vedomosti 1773, no. 55). The cantata, whose authors remainunknown, called Catherine the “Mother of Russians” in light of the suppression of thePugachyov revolt, which had just started.66A Both reports of the celebrations at theuniversity show that separate sections, or more correctly “couplets,” of these cantataswere performed as vocal interludes between speeches and the presentation of prizes.Something similar may be observed in the concert practice of the time, at which largesymphonic works were not performed in full all at once but in two sections, one at thebeginning of a concert and the other at the end.Other educational institutions kept pacewith Moscow University. In St. Petersburg many shows and large public festivities werestaged by the Society of Daughters of the Nobility, which produced comic operas andpastoral plays in which the pupils represented the graces, vestal virgins, andshepherdesses. The Spb. vedomosti has an interesting account of one such celebrationheld in July 1775 in which some four hundred performers participated, along with a horn

band, and four theaters were erected for the occasion.67 The Daughters of the Nobilitywas managed at the time by a well-known magnate of Catherine’s age, Ivan IvanovichBetskoi. This society often arranged entertainments for “invited guests of both sexes ofthe first five classes.” This is where Grétry’s opera La rosière de Salency premiered (19 July1775), as well as Philidor’s Le jardinier supposé (24 November 1775); we have reportsabout these in contemporary issues of the Spb. vedomosti. In 1773 they staged a Frenchtranslation of Pergolesi’s famous La serva padrona. The successful efforts of these youngpupils may be gathered from verses praising two girls, Ekaterina I. Nelidova and N. S.Borshchova, who played the roles of Serpina and Pandolfo [Uberto] in Pergolesi’sopera.68Similar performances were also given at the Shliakhetnyi Infantry Corps inPetersburg. When the empress honored the Corps with a visit on 23 January 1776, thecadets performed the opera Le roi et le fermier by Monsigny and the ballet Dezertir[probably Monsigny’s drame en prose mêlée de musique, Le déserteur].In July 1775 theconclusion of a peace treaty with the Sublime Porte was celebrated in an extraordinarilyfestive fashion at the Academy of Arts, again with Betskoi, president of the Academy, incharge. The festivities took place late in the evening. On the Neva, opposite the Academy,“a wooded island was fashioned” in the midst of which “a spacious meadow and, on bothsides, many villagers’ dwellings were visible between the trees.” From these village hutsemerged inhabitants (Academy students in costume) with scythes and other agriculturaltools. They mowed the meadow and converted it into a “pleasant promenade on whichthey sang to delightful pastoral music and hunting music for horns, singing rathercomplex praises to the founder of the Peace, Catherine II.” At the end of the festival, “thecombined choirs appeared with festoons and garlands and decorated the altars in thetemple; then they went out again in front of the temple and danced a big round dance,and finally sang a merry song and played rural and hunting music” (Spb. vedomosti 1775,no. 58).69These kinds of musical-theatrical celebrations show how festive such events hadbecome even in their musical component, and also how such festivities had becomeobligatory for administrative and pedagogical institutions. Musical culture gradually beganto penetrate even the remote provinces, where trained choirs and orchestras were beingintroduced, just as they were here [in the capitals].Among the nobility and the gentry, boththe increasing number of amateur performers and patronage were undoubtedlyinfluential. Court fashions naturally dictated the point of departure. But the spread ofnoble and serf orchestras and theaters also contributed to the increase in the number ofperforming musicians of both the free, professional class as well as of serfs, and thisresulted in a greater demand for public musical and theatrical entertainments.The court’sfondness for concerts and theatrical performances was infectious. The nobility and thewealthy in the capitals and provinces began to cultivate music and establish serforchestras and theaters. We have fragmentary data about many representatives of thecourt aristocracy and the Imperial bureaucracy who patronized or were temporarilyinvolved in music and theater, yet it is sufficient to single out the Naryshkins and thecounts Sheremetev who, more than anyone, played an important role in the history of

Russian music.70The Naryshkins were famous as patrons of horn music, to which aseparate chapter must be devoted [see chapter 16]. But apart from the fact that SemyonKirillovich Naryshkin’s name is linked with this invention or, rather, the perfection of thehorn orchestra, this magnate staged brilliant operatic spectacles in his home, asevidenced by the performance of Raupach’s Al’tsesta in 1774. His relatives are alsointeresting: Aleksandr L’vovich Naryshkin was also director of the court theaters, and LevAleksandrovich and Dimitrii Ivanovich had their own serf orchestras, about which someinformation was printed in the newspaper in the 1770s and 1780s.71The countsSheremetev were great patrons of music. Count P. B. Sheremetev (1713–1788), the son ofPeter the Great’s field marshal, had his own ensembles and theaters. Around 1760 thewell-known Italian musician Giovanni Rutini was the count’s Kapellmeister; Rutini was apianist and composer who, among other things, composed several harpsichord sonatasand cantatas in St. Petersburg.P. B. Sheremetev’s patronage followed the contemporaryfashions of the court, as he confined himself to organizing noble entertainments for theamusement of court circles, such as the event he produced on 21 February 1766.72 TwoFrench plays were staged with the participation of noble amateurs, and even in theorchestra there were princes, counts, and excellencies under the direction of the would-beKapellmeister, Baroness E. I. Cherkasskaia. The count’s exceptional wealth enabled him toprovide these entertainments in both capitals and on his estates. There are printedaccounts of the lavish celebration he gave in 1773, commemorating Catherine’s accessionto the throne, and of regular promenades in 1785 in the village of Kuskovo, well known inthose days, where there was a huge theater, a Palace of Unification, and other places foramusement.73 The libretti for several operas staged in Count Sheremetev’s private (serf)theater are of greater interest to us. Thus, on 7 February 1779, in the theater in hisMoscow home, the comic opera Zhivopisets [Khudozhnik], vliublennyi v svoiu model’ [Lepeintre amoureux de son modèle] with music by Egidio Duni was staged by “the singers ofhis eminence” for the first time. On 1 November 1780 his singers performed anothercomic opera, Koloniia [Antonio Sacchini’s La colonie]. Printed libretti of these operas listthe count’s players, which included the beautiful young serf actress Praskov’ia Ivanovna,who later became Count N. P. Sheremetev’s wife.73A The information we have on hisorchestra is incomplete. Around 1800 N. P. Sheremetev’s orchestra consisted of thirty-fivemusicians with two conductors, Stepan Anikievich Degtiaryov and Pyotr Kolmykov, andalso two eminent soloists, the pianist Meier and the cellist Johann Facius. Except for thetwo foreigners, all of the other musicians were the count’s serfs. The same number oforchestral players probably existed earlier as well, as the majority of Sheremetev’smusicians appearing on the 1802 list might have been in his service in the last years of theeighteenth century.74In addition to S. A. Degtiaryov, a talented composer of sacred musicand one of Count Sheremetev’s former serfs, the most interesting fate of all the membersof the theatrical company was that of serf actress Praskov’ia Ivanovna Zhemchugova.(That was her stage name, undoubtedly made up by the count [the word zhemchugmeans pearl]). Based on documents cited earlier, we know only that the roles she sang

were Rose in Monsigny’s opera [Rose et Colas] and the title role of Nina in the opera of thesame name [apparently Paisiello’s Nina, o sia La pazza per amore]; she also sang in aperformance of Pergolesi’s or Paisiello’s Stabat mater. P. Bezsonov, in his biography ofPraskov’ia Ivanovna published in Moscow in 1872, mentions another role which, if not thebest, was at least the one for which she was most famous: Grétry’s opera Les mariagessamnites, in which she first appeared before Empress Catherine and then, in 1797, whichshe performed for the Austrian emperor Joseph, for the former king of Poland, StanisławPoniatowski, and for other important people. In her wonderful portrayal of Eliane, sheappeared onstage wearing enormously valuable diamond jewelry; she was attired in thesplendid apparel of a knight, in which she was painted in the portrait exhibited inSheremetev’s Fontanka Palace in St. Petersburg.Praskov’ia Ivanovna was born in 1768 andmarried her master in 1801. Her meeting with Sheremetev in 1790, after the death of hisfather, decided her extraordinary destiny and is the theme of the song she sang, theabove-mentioned “Vechor pozdno iz lesochka,” which was widely known and quitepopular. In his biography of Zhemchugova, Bezsonov cites eleven variants of the text, inwhich the scene is most often set around Moscow or St. Petersburg. The melody, in its oldform, was published in 1901 by Aleksei Varzhenevskii.75 A portrait of Praskov’ia IvanovnaSheremeteva is published in Bezsonov’s book.The young countess had a short life; shedied two years after her marriage, which had been kept secret. Even before her death, theKuskovo theater had been sealed by the count. Recalling the former Sheremetev theater,the poet Ivan Mikhailovich Dolgorukii dedicated the following verses to Kuskovo:Teatrvolshebnyi podlomilsia,Khokhly v nem oper ne daiut,Parashin golos prekratilsia,Kniaz’ia vladoshi ei ne b’iut;Umolkli nezhnoi grudi zvuki,I Krez men’shoi skonchalsia v skuke.Theenchanting theater is demolished,No longer do Khokhols present operas there.Parasha’svoice is silent;No applause from the princes does she receive,The sound of her gentlebreast is stilled,Croesus the Younger has ended his life in weariness.76The establishmentof theaters and serf orchestras by persons of nobility and wealth confirms how far musichad moved from the circle of exclusively courtly entertainments. Gradually music andtheater spread to ever wider circles of Russian society, and the middle years of Catherine’sreign offer clear examples of this developing musical life.Lists of operas and balletsproduced in Russia during Elizabeth’s reign (1741–62) and those produced at courttheaters from 1763 to 1800 are presented in table 14.1.76A After the founding of theRussian theater in 1756, private enterprises were developed in both capitals. Theiroperatic repertory was independent of the court theaters, although most of theperformers were the same. The repertory of these theaters is therefore discussedseparately in chapter 17, which focuses on music in Russia’s public life during the secondhalf of the eighteenth century, and the personnel of the companies in these productions isalso examined in that chapter. Table 14.1 was compiled on the basis of documentaryevidence, the Kamer-fur’erskii zhurnal [Court chamberlain journal], the Archive of theImperial Theaters, contemporary printed libretti of operas, and reports in the Spb. andMosk. vedomosti from both capitals; uncorroborated or doubtful evidence from other

printed sources has been omitted.TABLE 14.1 Part A: Operas and Ballets Produced inRussia, 1742–1762TABLE 14.1 Part B: Operas and Ballets Produced at Court Theaters,1762–180015. Music in Russia’s Domestic Life during the Second Half of the EighteenthCenturyMusical education in the home. Music teachers. Serf orchestras and choirs.Conductors and musicians. The repertory of serf orchestras.Western-style music began tomake its way into wider circles of Russian society following the lead of the court and thenobility. This trend was already evident early in Catherine II’s reign, undoubtedlyinfluenced by the establishment of the Russian theater in Elizabeth Petrovna’s time, whichwas an event with profound cultural significance, fostering new artistic demands from thepublic. The repertory of the Russian theater was not restricted to plays, but includedopera and ballet as well, thus introducing completely new vocal and instrumentalcompositions to the Russian public. More townspeople then had a chance to familiarizethemselves with compositions by the foreign masters in Russian service (Araja, Raupach,Galuppi) and with Western novelties, mainly Italian and French. The first Russian attemptsin the area of dramatic music, which arose shortly thereafter, stimulated interest inmusical works by indigenous composers.Musical life gradually began to expand, goingbeyond merely servicing the court’s artistic requirements: there was a demand for musicteachers, musical instruments, and textbooks; concerts were arranged and musicalsocieties formed; music shops and publishers opened their doors, along with varioustypes of musical instrument workshops; and even in villages on country estates therewere orchestras, choirs, and theaters. These developments created a demand for musicteachers, and Russian musicians began to see themselves as composers, not of vocalchurch music as before but of new, secular, Western-style music.Our first music teacherswere, of course, foreigners. They were introduced by members of the court aristocracywho were studying the clavichord, for example, Princess Cherkasskaia or General-ProcurerIaguzhinskii. We do not know the names of these first teachers, but it is fair to assumethat in Anna’s and Elizabeth’s time, such high-ranking students were taught by conductorsand leaders of the court orchestra: Araja and the harpsichordist Raupach for theclavichord; and Hübner, Pieri (Peter III’s teacher), and Madonis for the violin. At Anna’scourt, the harpsichordist Gertrude Koenig undoubtedly gave lessons to distinguishedpupils.77E The names of these foreign music teachers from Catherine II’s time can beestablished more accurately. In 1762 a certain Luiza Kollier [probably Collier] ran a schoolfor young ladies on Vasil’evskii Island in St. Petersburg, at which there were clavichordclasses (Spb. vedomosti 1762, no. 12). A musician by the name of Khristianzen [probablyChristiansen] arrived in St. Petersburg in 1764 and taught clavichord and violin, and alsotuned clavichords (Spb. vedomosti 1764, no. 58). In 1766 a student living on Vasil’evskiiIsland took young pupils for room and board and taught the catechism, reading andwriting, and clavichord (Spb. vedomosti 1766, no. 96). In 1767 a clavichord teacher namedKlein, living on the former Millionnaia Street (presently Herzen Street), advertised in St.Petersburg (Spb. vedomosti 1767, no. 90). He seems to have been there for more than ayear. Two musicians arrived in St. Petersburg in 1779; one of them advertised “lessons on

wind instruments and the violin or to enter anyone’s service,” and the other offered to“teach violin and transverse flute to children” (Spb. vedomosti 1779, nos. 13 and 40). Thefirst of these musicians advertised his services again the next year.At that time,undoubtedly, tutors and governesses knowledgeable in music began to be employed inthe capital and on country estates. Thus, in 1780, “a young woman with a good knowledgeof French and arithmetic, who also knows how to dance and who plays the violin andclavichord” sought a position as a governess (Spb. vedomosti 1780, no. 80). That sameyear the newly arrived bandmaster Barges offered himself as “a teacher of keyboardinstruments and singing,” and another musician who played “the upright David’s harp”also “offered his services to those desiring to learn how to play that pleasant instrument,”promising to teach it “quickly and thoroughly” (Spb. vedomosti 1780, nos. 48, 76). A certainMadame Arens, who lived near the Kazan Church (now the Kazan Cathedral), offeredlessons for children in her home in “dancing, playing the clavichord, and singing fromprinted music” (Spb. vedomosti 1788, no. 6), and a newly arrived foreigner living atDemuth’s Inn announced his desire to teach German, French, and Latin as well as theclavichord and the harp (Spb. vedomosti 1791, no. 14). Still another unnamed foreigner,an “elderly Frenchman” who had “the necessary qualifications for the moral upbringing ofchildren,” wished “to obtain a post in a gentleman’s residence to teach the children to singItalian arias as well as dancing and fencing”; he hoped “by his kindly and honorableconduct to gain their confidence and goodwill” (Spb. vedomosti 1792, no. 14). In the sameyear a clavichord teacher named Girsh [probably Hirsch] arrived in St. Petersburg, as wellas some “foreigner who teaches English and the clavichord here in the city, and having afew hours to spare,” wished to “devote them to young people” (Spb. vedomosti 1792, nos.36, 51). Madame Tsigler [probably Ziegler], who ran a boarding school in Petersburg, “inaddition to the ordinary instruction in sciences and languages,” taught the girls singingtwice a week “for a very moderate fee” (Spb. vedomosti 1794, no. 21). In 1795 a Frenchtutor wished to be employed with his wife, “who has knowledge of French, plays thefortepiano and David’s harp, and draws, in a gentleman’s residence to teach children.”That same year a musician who played various musical instruments invited applicationsfor “music lovers” wishing to learn how to “play the violin, cello, flute, or any otherinstrument”; finally, a student who arrived from abroad offered his services “to teachchildren German, natural history, drawing, and the clavichord” (Spb. vedomosti 1795, nos.18, 26, 32, 88).The advertisement of an unknown musician who arrived in St. Petersburg in1787 and who played several musical instruments offered “his services to teachinstruments to the honorable public”; he was doubtless one of the many foreigners whosespecialty was to train serf musicians. Another was the conductor Akvit, who was also atthe disposal of gentlemen “wishing to have their people sent for instruction on windinstruments and the violin.” Such foreign musicians, as we shall see, were numerous in thecapital, and their presence demonstrates the spread of the fashion for serf orchestras.Wehave more specific information about music teachers in Moscow. One of the first privatemusic teachers was a foreigner by the name of Johann Heinrich Tanneif, a clavichord

teacher who advertised in 1776, and also the Russian “guild member,” Vasilii IvanovShcherbakov, who taught the violin, cello, and viola (Mosk. vedomosti 1776, nos. 17, 20). In1778 another “foreign performer on clavichord,” a woman living at Gorokhov Field, invitedparents to send their children to her “in order to acquire that art.” At the same time threeenterprising German bandmasters, Constantine and August Rossovskii and JohannMorzeus, opened the first music school on Solianka Street but for serfs only (Mosk.vedomosti 1778, nos. 10, 28). In 1782 a “recently arrived foreign musician” advertised“thorough lessons in playing the upright David’s harp, with or without pedals,” andanother recent arrival, an able performer on the violin and wind instruments, offered hisservices as a private music teacher, or rather as a conductor (Mosk. vedomosti 1782, nos.54, 79). The following year the Moscow musicians Mikhail Kerzelli and Anton Diehlannounced that they were opening a music school.78 From their advertisement in theMosk. vedomosti, it is evident that their school was restricted almost entirely to serfmusicians.79 General A. I. Rosliakov’s bandmaster, Otengofer [Ottenhofer], alsoapparently taught serf musicians; he advertised in 1784.Also in 1784, in Kitai-gorod [inMoscow], a foreign musician announced that he “teaches harp and also sells them.” Laterhe offered his services as a private tutor to teach children Latin and German as well asharp and violin (Mosk. vedomosti 1784, nos. 10, 25). A governess was prepared to teachlanguages and the fortepiano and “singing from thoroughbass” (Mosk. vedomosti 1784,no. 32). In the fall of 1784 Iosif Giutel’ [Huetel, Hyutel?] came to Moscow; he had formerlybeen a music teacher in the home of the Lithuanian chancellor Sapega, and he announcedclavichord and harp lessons (Mosk. vedomosti 1784, no. 89). He lived in the ForeignQuarter. Another recently arrived musician, Podchi, who lived in a new suburb on LittleDmitrovka Street, “taught fortepiano and thoroughbass with rules reduced to aminimum” (Mosk. vedomosti 1784, no. 103); still another musician from Vienna who livedby the Church of the Savior on Dokuchaev Lane, taught “clavichord, singing, andviolin” (Mosk. vedomosti 1785, no. 2). An Italian by the name of Andreani, who lived onPokrovka Street in the parish of the Church of the Assumption by the belfry, taught the six-string mandolin and gave lessons in Italian.80 In 1785 Anton le Mer, a Frenchman fromLuneville, undoubtedly an émigré, arrived in Moscow and sought a post in a private homeor in a public school. He was prepared to teach all sorts of languages and sciences,including fortifications and chemistry, and, furthermore, he could make porcelain objectsfrom broken faience. He also taught “drawing, keyboard, singing, and [could] easily teachequestrian tricks.” In the Zariad’e neighborhood, a girl “able to play and to teach music”advertised her services. A musician, who lived by the Kaluga Gate, advertised that he“played symphonies, sonatas, ballets, Polish minuets, etc., on the gusli” and “wanted toteach boys and was prepared to go to homes himself and play and offer services” (Mosk.vedomosti 1785, nos. 39, 50, 84). A foreign teacher, Fadei [Thaddeus] Amon, certified byMoscow University and living in the Foreign Quarter, gave specialized lessons atgentlemen’s homes in “geography and playing the fortepiano,” and at his own home“established dances [tantsbod] where one can learn how to dance minuets, polonaises,

and contredanses, all for a moderate price” (Mosk. vedomosti 1786, no. 3).Similaradvertisements by various and unknown music teachers often appear in contemporaryissues of the Mosk. vedomosti, offering their services as private tutors or as hourlyinstructors on musical instruments as well as drawing, fencing, and so forth. One alsofinds names of capable and permanent teachers who certainly influenced thedevelopment of musical taste in the “white-stone city” [Moscow]. The following were thenames of well-known clavichord teachers who advertised their services in the Mosk.vedomosti: Schönlein (1787); Shtein [Stein] (1788; he moved to a new apartment in thatyear, which means he lived in Moscow in the 1780s and 1790s); Gral [Graal, Grall?] (1788);Pulleo (returned to Moscow in 1792); Anton Poshman [Poschmann] (1794; apparently thefather of the first director of the Law School); Johann Christian Firnhaber (b. Hildesheim in1750, arrived in Moscow ca. 1780 and departed in 1796); Johann Wilhelm Hässler (b. 1747,d. in Moscow in 1822; he moved to Moscow in 1794 and at the beginning of thenineteenth century was one of the most popular teachers and composers in the city); in1799 a pianist “of the Polish nation,” Ivan Saprenovskii [probably Saprenowski], advertisedhis services. Among the teachers of other instruments one should mention the well-known flautist Christian Karl Hartmann (1750–1804; he was in Moscow in 1779); theharpists Adalbert [probably Volbert] Fischer (arrived from St. Petersburg in 1794) andDamiun, who “taught youths of the nobility” after his return from the countryside (1790);and an Italian, Ivan Anton Kanton (1794), who taught various wind instruments.81In thenewspapers of both capitals we encounter a whole series of all kinds of music teachers:voice teachers; teachers of various instruments (especially clavichord and harp; in 1798there is an advertisement by a guitar teacher); and even music theorists. They had theirschools or went to homes for private lessons or became domestic teachers or tutors. Theywere all incoming Germans, Czechs, Italians, or French nobility or citizens who emigratedfrom France just before or at the time of the revolution. They represented all levels, fromFonvizin’s Vralman [in the play The Minor] to Pushkin’s Beaupres.81A The best and mostexpensive of these teachers stayed in Moscow; others traveled about to provinciallandowners. We recall Monsieur Beaupres in Pushkin’s The Captain’s Daughter, who wasrecruited “from Moscow together with a year’s supply of wine and olive oil from Provence.”Most of the music teachers and conductors for serf orchestras were probably obtained ina similar way, through advertisements. We have no clear idea as to the scale ofprofessional fees prevailing at the time, although there is more information on the salary“as agreed upon” for teaching serf musicians, which was a fairly profitable occupation.Payments for single lessons were probably based more or less on rates established muchearlier and which continued even to the end of the nineteenth century. There wereinexpensive teachers, charging from fifty kopecks per lesson, and others who were muchmore expensive. Thus, from the announcement of the famous flautist ChristianHartmann, we know that “those desiring to utilize his lessons” paid one hundred rublesfor one month of classes, that is, about ten to twelve rubles per lesson.While St.Petersburg dictated musical fashion for contemporary Russian society and decided, to a

certain extent, who was to be famous and influential, Moscow, in its turn, was the centerfrom which the provinces acquired performing musicians (teachers and bandmasters), aswell as the music itself, that is, printed scores and musical instruments. That Moscow wasthe primary music marketplace in Russia may be seen in the numerous advertisementsselling and offering musical works that appeared in the Mosk. vedomosti in the 1780s andearly 1790s.There were many categories of musicians and conductors that fulfilled thedomestic needs of city homes and country estates. Among them were specialists inestablishing and training serfs for orchestras, and later for horn bands; conductors ofestate choirs; and unique encyclopedists such as le Mer, the émigré from Luneville, whoknew all the sciences and who, in addition to playing the clavichord, knew equestriantricks, drawing, and porcelain making. One also encountered different types of musicians,some of whom were of serf origins or were influenced by this milieu. Thus a freeman fromCourland, Nikolai Rutovskii, sought an engagement as a gusli player; a “first tenor” inMoscow wanted to obtain a position as “manager” or “overseer or as a teacher of choralmusic and singing”; and a tradesman from Astrakhan, Egor Matveev, who was seeking “ajob as a valet or clerk,” was also “able to teach singing from written music.”82 A musicianof an entirely different kind advertised in the Spb. vedomosti: “A foreigner whounderstands Russian, Polish, German, Latin, and, of necessity, some French, also writingand arithmetic, and who can play the harp and violin . . . desires a job in a manufacturer’soffice as a bookkeeper, or to give monthly lessons on the harp” (Spb. vedomosti 1794, no.24). Where else but in old Russia could one find such a linguist–harpist–bookkeeper all inone! This was by no means the only such instance.83 Their likes could be transplanted andmultiplied among us only during serfdom, when musicians and teachers were orderedinto the villages along with supplies of wine and provisions, when they were regardedmerely as a somewhat higher class of lackey, and when the serf musicians themselveswere sometimes treated like domestic cattle. Exceptions of a more or less humaneattitude were rare, and, on the contrary, types like the Skotinins and Prostakovs wereregular occurrences.83A The anonymous author of a long article titled “On Training andAdmonishing” which appeared in the Mosk. vedomosti (1783) was justified in describingdomestic servants, including, of course, members of the musical profession, as creatureson whom the personal happiness of the paid employees often depended. “In somehouseholds,” he writes, “the stewards are subjected to perfidies and obscenities. Theymust cultivate assiduously the friendship of these creatures (the butlers and servants),which can be acquired only by plying them daily with vodka, or they cannot get anythingaccomplished.”The subject of the orchestras and musicians on old country estatesremains to this day completely unexplored. However, the continuous existence of serforchestras for more than half a century (1775–1825, their most flourishing period in theprovinces), the creation of the horn band, an ensemble inconceivable without multitudesof serfs as performers, and the unquestionable and documented influence of the estateorchestras on the musical development of some outstanding Russian musicians(Degtiaryov, Verstovskii, Glinka, and others)—all this brings to the fore the role of serf

musicians in our musical history.The serf orchestras must not be viewed as a naturaloutcome of the cultural growth of Russian society’s artistic needs but as an aping of the all-powerful fashion established by the court aristocracy. These orchestras ceased to existwhen they ceased to be fashionable. This circumstance does not diminish the historicalimportance of these estate orchestras. They contributed to the spread of music into thewidest circles of Russian society and into the most remote parts of the country (what sortof music they spread is a different question!), and soon there was a huge rise in amateurmusic making in the country. At the same time it must be admitted that the serf musicianscould have had a negative impact on the masses in the countryside by diverting their earsand memories from ancient folk song and implanting a taste for instrumental musicwhich, after a series of simplifications linked to the development of the manufacturingindustry in the country, led to the complete dominance of the accordion [garmonika] andthe pre-reform balalaika in the villages.The formation of the serf orchestras was a simplematter. In the case of an average landowner, eight to ten servants were selected andhanded over to a conductor for training; they were usually boys whose fingers had notbecome rough by hard manual labor. Conductors were obtained in the same way astutors and cooks, or the budding musicians were sent to Moscow for study with somelocal pedagogue.84From the notices by Kapellmeisters Mikhail Kerzelli and Anton Diehl(Mosk. vedomosti 1783, no. 3), we know that several schools in Moscow served this verypurpose, namely, to teach serf musicians their art, beginning with the rudiments ofmusical literacy, or to rehearse the required repertory with conductors, sometimes withentire ensembles attending school together. Among these schools were the Moscowschool on Solianka Street headed by three bandmasters, the Germans Constantine andAugust Rossovskii and Johann Morzeus, as well as Mathias Stabinger’s school. The formerexisted in the late 1770s and advertised classes offering to teach “regimental anddomestic servants in singing, violin, and sacred music” (Mosk. vedomosti 1778, no. 28).The latter, Stabinger’s school, was established in the late 1780s. The conditions underwhich serfs were admitted to similar institutions for training and for educational programscan be seen in the announcement by Kerzelli and Co. and in Stabinger’s curiousadvertisement.85 We know the names of some individual bandmasters who undertook toteach serfs in Moscow or who offered to go to the estates for this purpose. Two havealready been mentioned: Ottenhofer and the conductor of Moscow’s Italian operacompany, Mathias Stabinger (1782–83).86 Subsequently the following bandmastersadvertised their services, mostly in Moscow, listed here in chronological order: a foreignerIvan Ivanov Ein (1784); Andrei Korzinov, a Polish violinist of noble birth and “belovedbandmaster” who was “a highly skilled performer on several musical instruments, also acomposer of polonaises, minuets, contredanses, etc.” and who offered to come to teach“for the fee of 50 kopecks per lesson”; the foreigner Ivan Matveev, a Kapellmeister“teaching wind instruments and violin”; Mikhail Kerzelli, already mentioned, advertisedbetween 1782–94; Semyon Nagast, apparently the Kheraskov bandmaster, acceptedyoung boys for instruction; Kapellmeister and composer of instrumental music Albertini,

who arrived in Moscow in 1795, offered to give lessons at his home or “to be received atthe pupil’s own home”;87 another Italian bandmaster, Ivan Sorini, who departed fromMoscow in 1797; Sinitsyn, who was apparently G. I. Bibikov’s serf musician, bandmaster,and violinist, also taught in Moscow either by the lesson or by the month, and receivedpupils in his home.88In addition to the conductors listed above, there were quite a fewothers in Moscow who trained serf musicians but whose names were not recorded andwho thus remain unknown. From the many contemporary advertisements, it suffices tocite here the following by an anonymous foreigner, a native of Vienna, and a musical jack-of-all-trades. He offered “to teach either in gentlemen’s homes or at his own place, by thelesson, fortepiano and singing; also on various orchestral instruments: winds and strings,horn and vocal music, that is, church concerti or operatic pieces, whether in Russian,French, or Italian. He can be found at the Ievlev home, on Il’inka Street, No. 10. He also hasfor sale the very best four instruments for a quartet: two genuine Steiner violins, a viola,and a cello, as well as two Viennese violins, all at a very low price.”89Another interestingtype of bandmaster trained and offered for sale ready-made bands. The names of twosuch “bandmaster-manufacturers” are known: Karl Sventitskii, who in 1792 offered forsale a band of eight musicians in Moscow, and Kapellmeister Ganzin [Hansin, Hansen?]),who in 1799 in St. Petersburg was selling “six boys who have been trained for a year and ahalf; two of them play violin, two are flautists, and two are horn players.” This Ganzin diedin St. Petersburg in the summer of 1800.One should mention that the buying and sellingof serf musicians was at that time a matter of course, as was the trading in domesticservants and peasants. Transactions of this kind were often advertised in thecontemporary press. The price for serf musicians was considerably higher than fordomestic servants, up to six hundred, one thousand, and at times even fifteen hundredrubles, whereas domestic servants were available at a much lower price.90 Somelandowners released their musicians for a fixed sum as quitrent or leased them on ayearly contract.91 The customary poor treatment of serf musicians at that time no doubtcompelled them to seek safety by running away. (It is enough to recall the inhuman andcruel treatment of such serf artists by Count Kamenskii, which, among other suchaccounts, served as the subject matter for N. Leskov’s story, “The Artist with a Toupee.”)And we do find a series of notices about runaway musicians, some of whom, judging by afew of the advertisements, pretended to be foreigners; this perhaps explains theappearance of such “foreigners” as Ivan Ivanov and Ivan Matveev on the musicalmarket.92The advertisements we have listed give us an idea of the composition of serforchestras at the time, as well as the length of their training, which could last from a yearand a half to five or six years; as we saw, moreover, they studied two or more instruments.These various factors suggest the following types of ensembles:1. Wind instrument bandof eight players: two clarinets; two flutes [recorders] or transverse flutes; two bassoons;and two horns; at times doubled;2. Mixed band of six players: two violins; two flutes; andtwo horns;3. Larger mixed band of eight to ten players: two violins; one cello; two flutes;one clarinet; two horns; and one basset horn, which became fashionable in the 1790s;4. V.

P. Saltykov’s orchestra, which was discharged in 1786 and consisted of three violins, viola,and bass (cello or bassoon); double bass; two horns; and two transverse flutes (Mosk.vedomosti 1786, no. 3).There were, of course, other kinds of instrumental ensembles,according to the landowners’ individual tastes or depending on the ability or specializationof the bandmaster. At any rate, the first grouping listed above was the basic type of mostdomestic orchestras. Paisiello’s large set of divertimenti, written for performance at court,was for just such an ensemble. The scores of the period also contain pieces for flute,violin, and bass; for two violins and bass; or for two clarinets and bass; and so forth—thesmall domestic ensemble for both amateur and serf performers.There were landownerswho also maintained choirs in addition to serf orchestras. Some of the serfinstrumentalists had been taught singing, and other singers were either recruited forservice or purchased, as in the following series of newspaper advertisements: “Musicianand singer for sale, plays the violin and sings bass, is also a capable doctor’s assistant”;“Needed: a tenorist and al’tist who can sing with their own voice (!)” sought for rent or forpurchase; “two musicians for sale, one plays the cello, bassoon, and flute, the other is abassoonist, and both sing tenor in the choir”; “Needed: a discant singer who knows how tosing from a score.”93 Singers and even conductors were also sometimes given leave inorder to earn money, and among the various advertisements the following is of interest:“Those wishing to learn choral singing from a bass [singer] and with him are two discantsingers (one of whom knows fifty pieces and the other, some fifteen) may find them at thecleric in the parish of the Church of St. Nicholas on the Sands, on the Arbat.”94 Suchchoral conductors had apparently been members of the former Synodal and churchchoirs in Moscow. Their repertory could hardly have been limited to church music andprobably included secular kanty, widely known at the end of the eighteenth century,together with the sentimental “Russian songs” for solo voice, which were becoming part ofdomestic musical life and which we shall examine in a separate chapter.Anotherinteresting question, which has not yet been studied, is the repertory of the ordinary serforchestras. Documentary data appear to be lacking, as are references in contemporaryhistorical materials (memoirs, letters, and so forth). It may be possible nevertheless toform a fairly accurate idea of the nature of this repertory. Operas, especially, havingenjoyed success in the capitals and at court, no doubt made their way into the repertoryof estate bands, according to fashion. As we read in the Spb. vedomosti: “Anyone desiringthe music of Italian operas (complete or in parts) now being performed at the courttheaters, is requested to apply to Signor [Luigi] Zanini on Bol’shaia Millionnaia Street.”95We can be sure that Signor Zanini was not the only purveyor of this kind of fashionablemusic. Music journals began to appear in the capitals around that time, and publishershad this fashionable repertory in stock. Some composers sold their own compositions,either in printed form or in manuscript copies, which were quite in demand among musiclovers. In 1786 M. Stabinger, mentioned above, announced in the Mosk. vedomosti asubscription for his Six Sonatas for Fortepiano with Violin Accompaniment, as well as“complete scores or excerpts” from his operas. Long before this, in 1774, I. Kerzelli

published four issues of the Muzykal’nye uveseleniia [Musical amusements], the firstjournal of printed music in Russia, which included, among other items, scores of his“chamber and orchestral trios”; the trios give us some idea of the serf orchestras’music.Many works with which we shall become acquainted in subsequent chapters onopera, vocal, and instrumental music in eighteenth-century Russia were certainlyperformed by our old serf orchestras. Yet their repertory was not limited only to suchworks; pieces by Western composers or by distinguished composers in the capitalsreached the country estates either in printed editions or in manuscript copies andrepresented the showier side of serf orchestras. This included works such as overturesand symphonies by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Cherubini, and Rossini, which laterentered the repertory of serf orchestras and which M. I. Glinka mentions in his memoirs.This more ostentatious repertory in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuriesincluded pieces by the so-called Mannheim school and their contemporaries (André,Bachmann, Giornovichi, Gyrowetz, Hoffmeister, Pleyel, Teyber, Wranitzky, and so forth),which I found in the already fragmented library of composer A. N. Verstovskii’s father.96Inaddition to these kinds of pieces, there was undoubtedly a sizable repertory written bylocal composers, works that unfortunately have disappeared without a trace. Thesecomposers were the bandmasters themselves; a 1792 advertisement offers a conductor“who plays several musical instruments and composes concerti for violin and otherinstruments.”97 These domestic composers were probably employed by manylandowners, and their homegrown works made up that unpretentious repertory thatdelighted our forefathers in their everyday domestic routine. As we shall see, the firstsuccesses of Russian comic opera, which included folk songs interwoven in its music, ledto a series of arrangements for piano and for solo voice of folk songs and “Russiansongs” (that is, artistic songs [composed art songs as opposed to folk songs]). Conductorson provincial estates also came under their influence and began to arrange works knownas shtuki (from the German Stücke) into simple piano pieces and, later, orchestral works.Occasionally they would write elementary variations on the melodies, or adapt Russianverse to pieces by Western composers. In this way collections of manuscript music wereamassed but most of them were probably lost during the wars and political upheavalswhich began with Napoleon’s invasion and ended with the uprisings of 1905 and theRevolution of 1917. Yet many of these manuscripts must have been preserved and overtime will fall into the hands of curious scholars studying our musical past. In my owncollection I have several such manuscript anthologies, and although they are fromsomewhat later periods, their content must be similar to that of the older collections fromthe last years of Catherine’s reign.One such manuscript, bound in leather and labeledPeselnik [Songbook] auch deisch Arien [the first word is written in Cyrillic], may be datedto the first years of the nineteenth century. The first page of this collection bears the date1804, and therefore it is not far removed from Catherine’s reign, as she died in 1796. Thismanuscript contains the musical labors of two conductors, apparently two estateconductors. One of them, judging from an annotation on the first remaining page of the

manuscript, was a W. Winer and the other was Iog. [Johann] Kreiter, who had a few worksentered in the second part of this collection. Most of the second part of the manuscript isdevoted to little fortepiano arrangements of folk songs and “Russian songs,” that is,secular and sentimental songs with written-out text. There are also fortepiano variations(a very popular form at that time), including, for example, five variations on “Sredi dolinyrovnyia” [In the gentle valleys].98 One interesting piece of this type in the manuscript is aset of variations on the quasi-folk song “Chem tebia ia ogorchila?” [How have I hurt you?],composed by Peter Biron of Courland (d. 1800) and dedicated to Maria Naryshkina,according to a note by Winer.99 Another interesting work, no. 127, sets the text of the folksong “Volga rechen’ka glubokaia” [The deep river Volga] to a melody by Haydn, againaccording to a note by Winer; this work is copied several times in the manuscript. Finally,the collection includes German songs, very simple in form and congratulatory incharacter, undoubtedly the inspiration of one of the compilers of the collection. They weretypical German conductors with an indifferent knowledge of the Russian language, whichenabled them to transcribe the folk texts, which already had been mutilated, in a semi-literate way, and then, at the end of the collection, to prepare the “RussianListing” [incorrectly spelled as Ruskoii Regiester]. These conductors of serf orchestras, whocould “if necessary” write French, who knew arithmetic and even made porcelain, and whowere “well-behaved” as they assured us, frequently offered their services to ourlandowners and busied themselves with the musical enlightenment of their masters andwith the strict drilling of the “creatures,” as the serf musicians were commonly called.16.The Russian Horn BandJohann Mareš. Improvements and development of the horn band.Conductors of the horn bands. Their repertory.The most peculiar manifestation of the serforchestra in Russia was the horn band. Our nobility showed a preference for these bandsfrom the days of Peter I, and we know from Bergholz’s Diary that in the second decadeafter the founding of St. Petersburg, there were serenades in the city and the noblesparaded with horn players during assemblies and excursions on the Neva. ElizabethPetrovna was also fond of these musical diversions. According to the Marquis de laChetardie, even during Anna Ioannovna’s reign, Elizabeth often traveled along the Nevaand the Fontanka with a horn band in attendance. Thus, despite the widely held belief,Johann Mareš did not invent the horn bands, since they existed before his arrival inRussia. Mareš did, however, improve the instruments and develop the ensemble.TheFrench horn (German Waldhorn, a forest hunting horn) was the original type of horn[roga]; later its shape and construction changed, and it served as the instrument for aspecial kind of wind band. The only printed treatise from the period fully dedicated to thehorn band is by Johann Hinrichs; we know from this work that the old (hunting) horn bandhad twelve French horns, two trumpets, and two post horns, and that there were alsosixteen musicians in Naryshkin’s hunting band when Mareš took it over in 1751.100 Thiswind ensemble quadrupled the sonority of the D major chord (d–f–a–d), to which theinstruments were tuned, and performed fanfares, calls, and other signals during the hunt.With improvements in the horn band, the ensemble began to serve more artistic purposes

and was therefore no longer restricted to hunting music only. The ensemble wastransferred to the concert hall and the theater, while the independent hunting bandcontinued to exist along its old lines.101 Mareš found this hunting music—thepredecessor of the horn band—in a highly chaotic state in 1751 and was entrusted with itsreorganization. This marked the beginning of a new kind of horn band, an exclusivelyRussian musical phenomenon that drew admiration, and perhaps veiled contempt, fromforeigners, who declared that such an ensemble was possible only in Russia, where theinstitution of serfdom was so firmly established.Jan Antonín Mareš [Johann AntonMaresch] (fig. 108) was a born wind player. From his youth he had a passion for theFrench horn and was soon recognized as one of its finest players. Mareš was born in 1719in Choteboř in Bohemia, where his father was superintendent of waterways. He waseducated in the local Roman Catholic monastery, where he learned to sing, and he fell inlove with music. At that time young men completed their education and usually earnedtheir first income by traveling, often on foot, far from their native land. In this way theycame to know the world, became acquainted with many new people, and started anindependent life. Mareš was attracted by the Royal Chapel in Dresden, then famousthroughout Europe, and so he went to Saxony, stopping at various princely residencesalong the way to meet local musicians. In Dresden he worked for some time under theguidance of a famous horn player named A. J. Hampel; he then continued to Berlin, wherehe studied cello with the famous cellist Josef Zyka.102 While in Berlin, Mareš startedteaching. One of his pupils was the young count A. A. Bestuzhev-Riumin (d. 1768), whorecommended Mareš to his father, Chancellor A. P. Bestuzhev-Riumin (1692–1767), as avirtuoso horn player. In 1748 Mareš entered the chancellor’s service in St. Petersburg andimmediately attracted attention as a virtuoso with the smooth, velvety tone thatcharacterized his playing. After hearing him, Empress Elizabeth invited him to join thecourt band. This apparently did not interfere with his teaching, and he continued to workwith his pupils from Count Bestuzhev’s band.Mareš was evidently successful, for soonthereafter his immediate superior, Master of the Hunt and Director of the Court TheatersSemyon Kirillovich Naryshkin (1710–1775), commissioned him to reorganize his ownhunting band. Mareš was appointed its conductor and took up residence in Naryshkin’shouse. This probably explains why he received such a low salary as a musician in the courtorchestra, only four hundred to seven hundred rubles. The court job assured him ofretirement pay, while his main income was derived from his simultaneous employment asconductor of hunt music both at court and for Naryshkin, as well as from his teachingactivities on the side.

History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800, Volume 1: From Antiquity to theBeginning of the Eighteenth Century, History of Music in Russia from Antiquity to 1800,Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century, Musical Cultures in Seventeenth-Century Russia

(Russian Music Studies), Rachmaninoff's Complete Songs: A Companion with Texts andTranslations (Russian Music Studies), Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music, PerformingTsarist Russia in New York: Music, Émigrés, and the American Imagination, The Last Opera:<I>The Rake's Progress</I> in the Life of Stravinsky and Sung Drama (Russian MusicStudies), Russia's Theatrical Past: Court Entertainment in the Seventeenth Century(Russian Music Studies), Three Loves for Three Oranges: Gozzi, Meyerhold, Prokofiev(Russian Music Studies)

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Half title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Editors’ Introduction to Volume 2 List ofAbbreviations 13. Music and Theater, 1730–1740 14. Music in Court Life during the Reignsof Elizabeth Petrovna and Catherine II 15. Music in Russia’s Domestic Life during theSecond Half of the Eighteenth Century 16. The Russian Horn Band 17. Music in RussianPublic Life during the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century 18. Musical Creativity inRussia during the Eighteenth Century 19. Literature about Music, Publishers and Sellers ofSheet Music, Instrument Makers and Merchants Music Appendix Table of Works GlossaryNotes Volume 2 Bibliography Index

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